In blind people, lost vision is partially compensated for by acute hearing and touch. The Irishman Neil Harbisson has normal vision, but cannot distinguish colors. A special apparatus on the head informs him about the color and its shades with sounds.
When Neil Harbisson, a resident of Ireland, was still a child, his parents could not understand for a long time why their son practically does not use the names of colors when communicating with them and playing with peers, preferring only the words "black", "white" and "gray" - and little Neil had gray objects of any color from yellow to blue.
And only some time later they learned that Neil had a rare anomaly from birth - he was completely deprived of the ability to distinguish colors. Neil cannot be called color blind - only some colors are color blind (for example, orange and green as in deuteranopia). His congenital ailment is called achromatopsia - Neil sees the world only in black and white and shades of gray.
Neil became an adult and once, while studying the characteristics of his disease, he met a programmer who wrote a special program for the Eyeborg device. After that, Neil began to perceive colors and their shades using sounds of different tones.
Thanks to his acute ear for music, Neil quickly learned to perceive 360 shades of all 7 primary colors with sounds, as well as ultraviolet and infrared rays invisible even to healthy people.
He wears his device on his head from morning until night and even convinced the police to allow him to be photographed in this form for a passport, since the device, according to Neil, "has become an integral part of his body."
Now the 29-year-old Irishman is convincing the authorities of the country to issue him a passport, indicating that he, Neil Harbisson, is a cyborg, since the capabilities of his body are significantly expanded compared to ordinary people thanks to the "electronic eye", which has become a special organ of his senses.
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He hopes that such a mark in his passport will help him to overcome the control at airports without the current difficulties and, most importantly, they will be allowed to enter the casino, where he is now prohibited from entering with an electronic eye on his head.