Nowadays, people use contact lenses more since it restores the vision, but it does not repair color blindness. A research team led by Haider Butt from the University of Birmingham has developed a particular type of contact lens which could correct certain kinds of color blindness.

Previous research on color blindness correction was conducted using gene therapy, while EnChroma developed sunglasses which could correct the issue. But they were bulky and expensive, and could not be used with regular corrective lenses.

The new contact lenses developed by Butt and his team worked on the same principle as EnChroma's sunglasses. The lenses were colored with a dye derived from rhodamine, which absorbs certain wavelengths of light between red and green and the patient could easily distinguish between those colors.

Haider Butt, lead researcher on the study said, "The dye processing we carried out does not need any complex preparation, it is not toxic to the human eye, and our method could be easily used in both glasses and contact lenses at low cost."

"We are now looking into using a similar process to correct purple-blue color blindness, and also to bring together a number of dyes to make lenses perform for both red-green and purple-blue color blindness simultaneously," says Butt. "We are about to commence human clinical trials shortly."