This is the moment a man became overwhelmed with emotion after trying on colorblind glasses for the first time.
Kris Sipe, 47, who has been colorblind his whole life, bought the glasses on a whim without knowing whether they would work.
A video made by Kris shows him trying on the eyewear in his Tulsa, Oklahoma home and immediately becoming captivated by the colors around his living room.
“It was so overwhelming to experience for the first time,” he said. “I wasn’t even sure the glasses would work so to have everything changed so much was crazy to me. It felt like a big light had been turned on and everything was illuminated.”
Picking out the most colorful film he could imagine watching on his high-definition TV, Kris was delighted with the green of the Emerald City in The Wizard of Oz.
“With my regular sight, the best way to explain it is that things are a bit duller and I don’t see exact colors,” he explains. “To me, a green traffic light just looks like a white light, and rainbows are just a yellow line.”
“I’ve been like this my whole life and when I couldn’t match colors in kindergarten, my parents realized what was up.”
Kris has owned the glasses since 2021 and goes about his day with the lenses clipped onto the nose bridge of his eyeglasses. He actually doesn’t wear them all the time as he says the intensity of the color spectrum can be overwhelming at times.
“It just feels too much to be seeing all these bright colors all the time. But if I know something is particularly colorful, I will flip them on and have a look,” he said. “The prettiest thing I’ve ever seen is a yellow fire hydrant. It was just so bright and vibrant.”
“I also never knew how bright and how blue the sky is but I take the time to look at it now.”
Optical technology that translates colors into the eyes of colorblind individuals is becoming more and more affordable.
