MSU, EnChroma partnership launches initiative to help color blind students

MISSISSIPPI STATE, Miss. (WCBI) – Mississippi State is partnering with a company to make the world a little brighter for some students.

MSU has partnered with EnChroma to launch a new initiative to support their color-blind students through the EnChroma Color Accessibility Program.

The company provides glasses that are engineered with special optical filters that help the color blind see an expanded range of colors more vibrantly and clearly.

This is what the drill field looks like to most Mississippi State students.

Now, this is what color-blind students see.

Amelia Fox said her students who have a color deficiency risk their safety every time they fly drones out in the field.

“When we teach students to fly unmanned vehicles, the rotary-copter vehicles have to be colored red for danger and green for safety. So, aircraft fly forwards, but these aircraft can fly in multiple directions. And if a student doesn’t know if the aircraft is coming at them or flying towards them, they’re at risk,” said Fox.

Even assembling the aircraft is a challenge if you can’t see color variations.

“When they’re registering the aircraft, they’re putting it together, they’re connecting wires, they have to be able to see three different colored wires. And they couldn’t do that. I would have to do that for them. So, it’s not just the flying, it’s the absolute management of objects and items from point A to Z,” said Fox.

The need for these glasses spread campus-wide. Geoscience professor, Amy Hoffman, said her geology students rely on color for daily assignments

“For the last 15 years, this has been something I’ve noticed but I haven’t really found something that was really helpful for everybody. I could do accommodations to the best of my ability, but these Enchroma glasses are the thing I think is really gonna help my students who are struggling with colorblindness in the classroom.”

These glasses would normally cost almost $400, but students can rent them for free at the university.

Contact Amy Moe Hoffman, Instructor, and Geology & Museum Curator, directly at amhoffman@geosci.msstate.edu for instructions on how to rent a pair of EnChroma glasses.

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