How are colourblind people able to recognize the colours when they put on the special glasses, they have never seen those colours, right?

Question

How are colourblind people able to recognize the colours when they put on the special glasses, they have never seen those colours, right?

In: Biology

Answer 1

Trying to be REALLY ELI5 here:

First, colorblindness is not just seeing everything in black-and-white.

##WHAT IS COLOR?
Our eyes have color sensors. Most people have 3 different colors sensor (Red, Green, Blue). When we look at a color, all 3 sensor are stimulated depending on the color. So, for example, we can see a lot of green, a bit blue but no red at all, and then our brain interprets that as a unique single color.

##WHAT IS COLORBLINDNESS?
There are dozens of different types of colorblindness. The most usual are when one sensor overlaps the other, that is: one green-bluish and another blue-greenish. So the sensors are kind of redundant because they will always detect almost the same thing.

##HOW COLORBLIND GLASSES WORK:
They filter out that overlapping intersection. So those two almost identical sensors will start to actually detect different colors.