MADISON, Ala. — The Rocket City Trash Pandas has partnered with EnChroma to become the first professional sports team in America to enhance the gameday experience for fans who are red-green color blind. The Trash Pandas will permanently make special EnChroma glasses for red-green color blindness available for color blind guests to borrow so they can better experience the vibrant colors of the game they love.
“Green grass and the incredible blue ‘baseball’ skies are so synonymous with the baseball,” said Trash Pandas Executive Vice President & General Manager. “We’re glad to partner with EnChroma to make these opportunities available to fans who wouldn’t otherwise have the opportunity to experience the breathtaking sights of a Trash Pandas game.”
While people with normal color vision see over one million shades of color, those with red-green Color Vision Deficiency (CVD) see an estimated 10% of hues and shades. To them, colors can appear dull, washed out and indistinguishable; purple looks blue; red seems brown; gray appears pink; and green and yellow can look similar. For color blind ballplayers and fans, it might be harder to pick up the rotation of the red stitches on the ball or find a pop fly against a gray sky.
“For color blind players, the baseball can blend in with the brown dirt infield and the green grass, while the red of the Trash Pandas’ uniforms can look dull. Even colorful sunsets, scoreboard graphics and postgame fireworks may seem less impressive,” said Erik Ritchie, CEO of EnChroma. “We are thrilled that the Trash Pandas are pioneering color accessibility in baseball. We hope that other ballclubs and sports teams will enable color blind fans to experience their favorite teams in richer color with our glasses too.”
EnChroma glasses’ patented lenses are engineered with special optical filters that help people with red-green color blindness (deuteranomalous and protanomalous types) see an expanded range of visible colors. The glasses are not a cure for color blindness, work for eight of ten red-green color blind people, and results and reaction times vary. A study by the University of the Incarnate Word illustrated the benefits of the glasses.
