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They may not be formally recognized as disabled, but for some the colours of the season don’t hold the same lustre.
Sean Watson works as an audio-visual technician at major venues in Ottawa. Even if he has trouble perceiving green, that hasn’t discouraged him from taking in the holiday colours in the city.
“I do still really enjoy all of the Christmas decorations and lights, and the snow, which I’m pretty sure looks the same for myself as it does to you,” Watson says. “That’s what I was raised to associate with Christmas; just for me, they might look different than what others perceive them to be.”
On the spectrum of dark to light shades, greens may appear anywhere from brown to yellow to white for him. “Whilst in kindergarten, I would colour the leaves of trees brown and the trunk green.”
On the job, Watson uses special cameras and scopes to set the white balance on cameras or calibrating projectors. Afterward, he finds another set of eyes to make sure the colours match. “It’s frustrating not to be able to trust your own eyes,” he admits.
While most Ottawans see lush green while in the Gatineau Hills, Watson takes in the scenery differently.
“While hiking the Gatineau Hills, when I come to a peak and look out over the trees, for example, I see varying shades of brown versus varying shades of green.”
For colour vision-deficient people like Watson, is the grass greener on the other side? For now, Watson doesn’t think he’s missing out on much, and he prefers that his perception of the world remains as it is.
“I feel that if I ever got a glimpse of what life was like without it, and had to go back to how I see things, I think that could really affect my psyche. I’d know then what I was missing out on, whereas now I don’t even think about it in my day-to-day.”
That said, a bucket list item might be to see the true colours of the rainbow. “I know rainbows are beautiful, but, alas, what I see is probably skewed — beautiful still, but perhaps not as exquisite as what others see.”
Colour-vision deficiency is found in about eight per cent of males and 0.5 per cent of females, according to Dr. Jeff Hovis. A professor of optometry and vision science at the University of Waterloo, his research specializes in colour perception and visual acuity.
Hovis explains that the incidence rate is lower in non-Caucasian males, though the distribution pattern evades vision experts like himself.
“Nobody’s really too sure as to why that is,” Hovis says. “It seems to be that Caucasians were more prone to the mutation that occurs on the X chromosome that codes the cones,” referring to the cells that allow for colour perception in the eye.
For people like Watson, gene therapy is being developed to rehabilitate cells with the missing fragment of DNA that codes for full-colour vision.
“It’s possible, at least in monkeys and mice, to add genetic information to code for the cones missing from the retina,” Hovis said, citing data published in the Nature International Journal of Science in September 2009. “The more exciting part is that you can do it when the monkeys are (of) adolescent (age).” At this age, the monkeys were shown to be mature enough to have developed a visual pathway to house the new genetic code.
In her 25 years of optometry work, Dr. Kirsten North has regularly assessed patients for colour vision at Merivale Vision Care. She is a first resource to the patients she diagnoses with colour-vision deficiency.
For practical reasons, certain jobs are out of reach to vision-impaired individuals. Colour perception is crucial for personnel such as police officers and firefighters. As an example, North points to one situation that a police officer might experience: “If someone’s getting away and you’re saying they were in a dark grey car, when it might have been green.
“Pilots have to be able to see the red lights and the green lights properly to land planes,” she said. With apologies to visual creatives, “fashion and interior design are probably not a good idea.”
There are many workaround mechanisms to help the vision-impaired. Enchroma glasses enhance certain colours that are difficult to make out, and have the look of portable sunglasses.
On everyday objects, visual cues help contextualize what the colours cannot. On traffic lights, the red signal is enlarged; on card payment terminals, labels are affixed to red and green buttons. Placement, size and visual aids go far to increase access for all.
In Ontario, red and green lights are easy enough for the colour vision-impaired to tell apart: the placement of the red signal at the bottom as well as its larger size are appreciated attributes. In Gatineau, however, traffic signals contain four lights or more and are displayed horizontally.
Switching between each province’s lights is tricky, North acknowledges. “They have to memorize both if they’re going to go across the border.”
In September 2014, OC Transpo commissioners unveiled maps of the revised LRT system. Members of the colour vision-impaired community immediately indicated that its red and green colour scheme would make it difficult to distinguish the Confederation Line from the Trillium Line.
Maps are particularly hard to see, North said. “Anything where things are colour-coded, there’s always a chance that there’s going to be a problem.”
The beauty of the holiday season stretches beyond any colour-coded model. Whatever your vision, there is a way to celebrate it fully.
查看原文...
Sean Watson works as an audio-visual technician at major venues in Ottawa. Even if he has trouble perceiving green, that hasn’t discouraged him from taking in the holiday colours in the city.
“I do still really enjoy all of the Christmas decorations and lights, and the snow, which I’m pretty sure looks the same for myself as it does to you,” Watson says. “That’s what I was raised to associate with Christmas; just for me, they might look different than what others perceive them to be.”
On the spectrum of dark to light shades, greens may appear anywhere from brown to yellow to white for him. “Whilst in kindergarten, I would colour the leaves of trees brown and the trunk green.”
On the job, Watson uses special cameras and scopes to set the white balance on cameras or calibrating projectors. Afterward, he finds another set of eyes to make sure the colours match. “It’s frustrating not to be able to trust your own eyes,” he admits.
While most Ottawans see lush green while in the Gatineau Hills, Watson takes in the scenery differently.
“While hiking the Gatineau Hills, when I come to a peak and look out over the trees, for example, I see varying shades of brown versus varying shades of green.”
For colour vision-deficient people like Watson, is the grass greener on the other side? For now, Watson doesn’t think he’s missing out on much, and he prefers that his perception of the world remains as it is.
“I feel that if I ever got a glimpse of what life was like without it, and had to go back to how I see things, I think that could really affect my psyche. I’d know then what I was missing out on, whereas now I don’t even think about it in my day-to-day.”
That said, a bucket list item might be to see the true colours of the rainbow. “I know rainbows are beautiful, but, alas, what I see is probably skewed — beautiful still, but perhaps not as exquisite as what others see.”
Colour-vision deficiency is found in about eight per cent of males and 0.5 per cent of females, according to Dr. Jeff Hovis. A professor of optometry and vision science at the University of Waterloo, his research specializes in colour perception and visual acuity.
Hovis explains that the incidence rate is lower in non-Caucasian males, though the distribution pattern evades vision experts like himself.
“Nobody’s really too sure as to why that is,” Hovis says. “It seems to be that Caucasians were more prone to the mutation that occurs on the X chromosome that codes the cones,” referring to the cells that allow for colour perception in the eye.
For people like Watson, gene therapy is being developed to rehabilitate cells with the missing fragment of DNA that codes for full-colour vision.
“It’s possible, at least in monkeys and mice, to add genetic information to code for the cones missing from the retina,” Hovis said, citing data published in the Nature International Journal of Science in September 2009. “The more exciting part is that you can do it when the monkeys are (of) adolescent (age).” At this age, the monkeys were shown to be mature enough to have developed a visual pathway to house the new genetic code.
In her 25 years of optometry work, Dr. Kirsten North has regularly assessed patients for colour vision at Merivale Vision Care. She is a first resource to the patients she diagnoses with colour-vision deficiency.
For practical reasons, certain jobs are out of reach to vision-impaired individuals. Colour perception is crucial for personnel such as police officers and firefighters. As an example, North points to one situation that a police officer might experience: “If someone’s getting away and you’re saying they were in a dark grey car, when it might have been green.
“Pilots have to be able to see the red lights and the green lights properly to land planes,” she said. With apologies to visual creatives, “fashion and interior design are probably not a good idea.”
There are many workaround mechanisms to help the vision-impaired. Enchroma glasses enhance certain colours that are difficult to make out, and have the look of portable sunglasses.
On everyday objects, visual cues help contextualize what the colours cannot. On traffic lights, the red signal is enlarged; on card payment terminals, labels are affixed to red and green buttons. Placement, size and visual aids go far to increase access for all.
In Ontario, red and green lights are easy enough for the colour vision-impaired to tell apart: the placement of the red signal at the bottom as well as its larger size are appreciated attributes. In Gatineau, however, traffic signals contain four lights or more and are displayed horizontally.
Switching between each province’s lights is tricky, North acknowledges. “They have to memorize both if they’re going to go across the border.”
In September 2014, OC Transpo commissioners unveiled maps of the revised LRT system. Members of the colour vision-impaired community immediately indicated that its red and green colour scheme would make it difficult to distinguish the Confederation Line from the Trillium Line.
Maps are particularly hard to see, North said. “Anything where things are colour-coded, there’s always a chance that there’s going to be a problem.”
The beauty of the holiday season stretches beyond any colour-coded model. Whatever your vision, there is a way to celebrate it fully.
查看原文...
