Chau Chak Wing Museum is Australia’s first to offer visitors colour-vision-enhancing glasses. So what happens when one man tries them on?
Sydney’s Chau Chak Wing Museum is offering colour-blind visitors special colour-enhancing glasses to view the exhibits.Sydney’s Chau Chak Wing Museum is offering colour-blind visitors special colour-enhancing glasses to view the exhibits.Last modified on Sat 4 Jun 2022 21.02 BSThere are a few everyday situations that 24-year-old Mason Suljic struggles in. He can’t always read graphs, charts or maps very well. The red squiggly line that alerts you to spelling mistakes looks different to him.
Chau Chak Wing Museum’s South Sea Beauty by Nicholas Chevalier - as seen in colour, and by those with green-red colour vision deficiency.“It’s weird,” he laughs. When you’re used to seeing colours a certain way, Suljic says, the sudden change can feel discomforting. “It’s kind of easier to stick with what you know.”“I’m not sure [the painting] is the ‘right’ colour that normal people see, but it’s different,” he says.
The glasses, which are created by a US company called Enchroma, are part of a mounting wave of tech innovations aimed at improving vision for those with colour-blindness. Recent years have seen small but significant advances – like Apple allowing users to navigate their iPhones with corrective colour filters, or video games such as Grand Theft Auto introducing colour-blind modes.