Life brightens for local boy
Karen Peterson
Jace Matt tries on his new free EnChroma color-correcting glasses.
Karen Peterson
While wearing the glasses, Jace notices his red shoelaces are “really bright.”
Karen Peterson
Jace takes a look at his new glasses that will help him see color correctly.
Karen Peterson
Jace takes a look at his new glasses that will help him see color correctly.
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ST. IGNATIUS – Jace Matt, 12, sees the world a little differently when he puts on his new aviator-style glasses.
“Everything looks bold,” he said wearing the glasses that help correct what is known as color blindness. For him, colors in the red spectrum appear dull.
Jace is one of three people in the State of Montana to receive a free pair of color correcting glasses worth about $400 along with 75 recipients across the United States from a company called EnChroma. The Clorox bleach company provided additional funding for the project. The recipients were selected based on personal videos they sent into the contest explaining why they needed the glasses.
In his video, Jace explained that he wants to be able to see sunsets like everyone else. He also wants to see the bright regalia colors as his friends and family dance in powwows. And he wants to see what the full color spectrum looks like in a rainbow.
“I can only see blue and yellow,” he said.
Color deficient is the term the eye doctor used to describe his condition several years ago. Jace can see color, although he doesn’t perceive the colors in the same way as the general population. He has the most difficulty with red tones.
He thought for a moment before trying to figure out how to describe the colors he sees. He said sunsets don’t seem as bright to him as they do to everyone else, and the color maroon looks more like brown to him. He first noticed that he sees differently when he was in first grade.
“I had to ask ‘is this green or purple,’” he said of the crayons and markers he was using in class. When he got older, he would read labels to figure out the exact color. His mother, Tara Matt, said that he learned colors quickly as a young child, but the colors he saw were different.
“It was his version of that color,” she said.
His middle school teacher, Stacey Doll, recently gave him a color sorting challenge without the glasses. She said he did really well with the test using the adaptive skills he has acquired over the years.
Jace tried the color correcting glasses on last week for the first time, but he didn’t see that big of a change. He continued wearing the glasses. Within about an hour, he happened to look down. He noticed something different happening with his red shoelaces.
“They were really bright,” he said. “I’d never seen red look like that.”
He noticed something else strange within a few days when he saw a pink poinsettia flower in a flower shop. He asked if they were always supposed to be pink.
“I thought they were beige,” he said.
Jace plans to continue wearing the glasses to see if any other color changes appear. Without the glasses, his vision returns to his color deficit state. He is still looking forward to seeing the summer sunsets, rainbows and going to powwows.
