For 47 years, Kris Sipe had never truly seen color.
Colorblind since birth, Kris had learned to live in a world where colors were muted, unclear, and often invisible. On a whim, he decided to buy a pair of colorblind glasses, not knowing if they would work at all.
What happened next left him speechless.
In a video filmed inside his Tulsa, Oklahoma home, Kris puts on the glasses for the first time and is instantly overwhelmed by what he sees. The colors around his living room suddenly come alive, and emotion quickly takes over.
‘It felt like a big light had been turned on,’ Kris said. ‘Everything was illuminated. I wasn’t even sure the glasses would work, so seeing such a huge change was incredible.’
Excited to see more, Kris turned on his high-definition TV and chose the most colorful movie he could think of: The Wizard of Oz. The green of the Emerald City completely amazed him.
Before the glasses, colors looked very different to Kris.
‘Things were just duller,’ he explained. ‘A green traffic light looked white to me, and rainbows were basically just a yellow line.’
His parents first realized something was different when he struggled to match colors in kindergarten. Since then, colorblindness was simply his normal.
Kris has owned the glasses since 2021 and clips them onto his regular eyeglasses when needed. He doesn’t wear them all the time because the brightness can be overwhelming.
‘Sometimes it’s just too much,’ he said. ‘But if I know something will be colorful, I flip them on and take a look.’
One moment stands out above the rest.
‘The prettiest thing I’ve ever seen is a yellow fire hydrant,’ Kris shared. ‘It was so bright and vibrant. I also never knew how blue the sky really is. Now I actually stop and look at it.’
Thanks to advancing optical technology, glasses like these are becoming more affordable, giving more colorblind people the chance to experience the world in a whole new way.
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