Glasses donated to New London School District
By John Faucher
One woman’s act of kindness is helping students in the New London School District see the world differently than they ever imagined.
Gloria Mihna, a parent whose children have already graduated from the district, was at home one day when she read about a breakthrough technology designed to help the color blind see colors better.
Discovery
Mihna recalled her only experience with color blindness years ago was with a co-worker.
“I remember we were in a conference room doing an exercise one day and this gentleman that we worked with asked everyone to pass in the lime green sheet of paper.
Everyone kind of looked around and checked their papers but didn’t see any lime green sheets. We thought we must have missed it,” said Mihna.
Then the co-worker realized what had happened and explained his color vision deficiency (CVD).
People with normal color vision see more than one million hues and colors, but the red-green color blind only see an estimated 10 percent of colors.
Years later, Mihna came across the subject of CVD again while on Facebook.
It prompted her to look into it further.
She found that roughly 8 percent of men and 0.5 percent of women in the United States suffer from red-green color vision deficiency.
“That’s 13 million in the U.S. alone,” said Mihna.
She also learned of a special pair of glasses developed in the early 2000s by a glass scientists and mathematician that have been proven to help alleviate the most common red-green color blind deficiencies.
Mihna reached out to Kent Streeb, director of public relations and partnerships at EnChroma Corporation, producers of the glasses.
EnChroma’s glasses contain special optical filters that enhance the clarity, vibrancy, range of colors and color discrimination for the color blind, as well as their depth and detail perception.
Mihna thought about how she could help make a difference. That’s when she decided to work with EnChroma to purchase several thousand dollars worth of the glasses for students to use in the New London School District.
In the New London School District there are seven schools and 2,284 students. According to national averages 1 in 12 boys are color blind and 1 in 200 girls are color blind.
That’s approximately 91 boys and 6 girls likely to suffer from CVD in the district.
How do we know?
According to Streeb, color blind students can struggle following information containing color such as graphs, charts, PowerPoint presentations, maps and more. However, do color blind students know they’re color blind? Moreover, do their parents and teachers know?
“That is why we are strongly advocating for universal color vision deficiency testing in all schools in all states,” said Streeb.
“EnChroma’s research shows only 11 of 50 states test schoolchildren for color vision deficiency.”
Kandi Martin, the district’s director of pupil services, said Wisconsin currently does not test for color blindness.
Martin said the only way the district knows of students with CVD is if parents alert them to it, or it’s discovered accidently through the learning process.
Mihna is on a mission to help change that.
Not only is she working with Martin and Streeb to get more glasses into the hands of students that need them, but she’s also advocating for the district to obtain a tool it can use to test children for color blindness in their routine screenings.
Trial run
On Wednesday, Jan. 9, Mihna and Martin were able to see firsthand how the new EnChroma glasses help children better experience color.
A handful of students and their parents were able to visit the district office and try on the new glasses that Mihna purchased for use in the district.
Various colored objects and towels were placed about the room and on tables for the children to view once they let their eyes adjust to the new glasses. The glasses themselves resemble a look of lightly tinted sunglasses.
The youngest student in the test group was 6-year-old Ethan Griffin. For Ethan the color red appears gray. That was before he had access to the glasses.
Ethan’s mother Whitney Griffin said they were first alerted to his vision problems when he failed his eye test in kindergarten.
After visiting an eye doctor they discovered he had color vision deficiency, especially when two or more colors are together at the same time.
After donning the new glasses and getting acclimated, Ethan smiled as he correctly called and pointed out every color in the mixture before him.
Tears began to well in his mother’s eyes as she stood behind him.
Afterwards she told the Press Star, “It truly touched my heart in many ways.”
“I’d like to thank Gloria again for giving Ethan the chance to see what it’s like to see more than one color at a time,” said Griffin.
“We are definitely going to look into getting a pair of them for at home,” she said to Martin and Mihna.
Hands-on instructions
Mihna explained the proper care and handling instructions for students and parents as she placed the glasses on students for their first try.
“I felt like I was holding something very powerful in my hands and transferred all that power to whoever was wearing them,” said Mihna of the experience.
“I’m hoping it will bring more awareness for parents and students,” she added.
“Maybe someone else will offer to help the district purchase additional glasses for more students or for another district,” she said.
Seeing the students’ reaction to the new glasses, and emotion of the parents at the test trial, “made it all worthwhile,” Mihna said. “I felt like I was making a difference for their future.”