For most of us, red and green are incredibly different colours. However, many people with colour-blindness find them almost impossible to tell apart. This is the problem that a new design of contact lens is aiming to solve.
The most common type of colour-blindness is called deuteranomaly (dyoo-ter-an-om-al-ee), commonly referred to as red-green colour-blindness. People with this condition have a problem with the cells in their eyes that detect green light. These don’t work as well as they should, while their red-detecting cells work perfectly. Because of this, signals from the green receptors get overpowered by red, making colours difficult to tell apart.
To combat this, a team from Israel have made contact lenses that filter out excess red light, allowing the green to be detected. This technology has already been used for glasses, but until now curved surfaces such as contact lenses were impossible. Following safety testing, these should enter the market and start making lives just a bit less confusing.
Lachlan Writes Science 