SpectraAid wins Rep. Gus Bilirakis’ 2025 Congressional App Challenge in Florida’s 12th District

When asked what inspired the creation of SpectraAid, Darren Lau said, “My inspiration to create SpectraAid comes from my own experiences with color blindness. As a person who has red-green color blindness, or Protanopia, I’ve experienced the difficulties from this condition that have affected my daily life. As an example, in school, whenever teachers would write on whiteboards using red and green markers to denote some difference, I could never tell because the two marker colors looked identical.

“Both my dad and grandpa also have color blindness, as my dad is green-blue colorblind (Tritanopia), and my grandpa has Deuteranopia, a specific type of red-green color blindness. Hearing their stories when I was younger, about how they couldn’t apply to certain jobs or their challenges in everyday life, made me wonder about how widespread this condition is.

“When I began connecting with the colorblind community in Pasco County and Tampa Bay, I heard story after story of the same struggles my dad, grandpa, and I went through. In these conversations, what struck me most was how these people had tried many different ‘solutions’ to color blindness, but none were really effective. The most common remedy I heard was colorblind glasses, which claim to filter out certain wavelengths of light to help those with color vision deficiencies (CVD). This was an exciting possible solution to me, but when I started conducting my own research and reading academic papers that had tested these glasses, I learned that they only work on a small minority of people with CVD. I tried them out myself once and confirmed that they had no effect on my vision, and even if they did work for someone, these glasses were extremely expensive, making them impractical for most people.

“Given how common CVD was and the lack of solutions, I wanted to build an app that was extremely accessible and would be effective in helping all colorblind people, no matter the type or severity. This is why I turned to artificial intelligence and deep learning when I began brainstorming possible solutions. With AI, each image can be analyzed and altered accordingly, essentially being tailored to every person. Instead of a one-size-fits-all solution like the colorblind glasses, my app would be able to adapt to whatever the situation was. Additionally, since my app would be available on mobile devices and the web, it would always be one click away for convenience. This was how SpectraAid was born.”