The Centre Pompidou is the latest museum – and the first in France – to offer EnChroma glasses for colour blindness.
The glasses allow colour blind visitors to see an expanded range of clear and vibrant hues in the museum’s artworks.
Per a press release, one in 12 men and one in 200 women are colour blind. There are around 2.8 million people who are colour blind in France, 30 million in Europe and 350 million across the world.
Known for its collection of modern and contemporary art, the Centre Pompidou welcomes more than three million annual visitors. An estimated 128,000 of these are colour blind.
“Always concerned with offering the best visitor experience to all audiences, the Centre Pompidou is delighted to offer people with colour blindness the possibility of trying EnChroma glasses, a very innovative device in the museum sector,” said David Cascaro, director of the Centre Pompidou’s public division.
People with normal colour vision see more than one million shades of colour, while people with colour blindness only see an estimated 10 percent of them.
EnChroma’s accessibility programme is already utilised by nearly 200 public institutions, including libraries, schools, universities, national parks, gardens, and more than 80 major museums.
Museum accessibility
These include the Gallerie d’Italia in Milan, Australia’s Chau Chak Wing Museum, and Centraal Museum Utrecht in the Netherlands, as well as the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Dallas Museum of Art, and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in the US.
“We are thrilled that one of the world’s foremost visionaries in arts and culture – the Centre Pompidou – is demonstrating its commitment to accessibility and inclusion for those with colour vision deficiencies by loaning EnChroma glasses to guests,” said Erik Ritchie, CEO of EnChroma.
“Their example will generate more awareness for the prevalence and effects of colour blindness, inspire other museums and organizations to follow their lead, and ultimately expand opportunities for colour blind people to more fully experience colorful, iconic artwork like never before.”
