How Tennessee is helping the colorblind experience fall colors

A video of colorblind men experiencing Tennessee’s fall colors with the help of adapted viewfinders has gone viral – again.

The emotional Tennessee Department of Tourist Development video - in which the grown men are moved to tears when they see the rolling vistas of red, yellow, orange and green through the specially equipped viewfinders at Ober Gatlinburg – was released last year and has been watched some 3 million times on YouTube.

The video resurfaced in a Reddit post four days ago and has picked up nearly a million more views and several hundred comments.

The 3-1/2 minute “Colorblind Viewfinder” video, which TDTD made in partnership with media company VML, earned three Silver Lion Awards at the Cannes Film Festival in France this past spring.

When the video was made, the special viewfinders had only been installed at Ober Gatlinburg, Big South Fork National River & Recreation Area and at an I-26 overlook in Erwin – all in East Tennessee.

This fall more viewfinders were installed at nine additional locations across the state, including the Meeman-Shelby Forest State Park and Chickasaw State Park, both in West Tennessee, the Standing Stone Park in Middle Tennessee and several more East Tennessee locations – Ruby Falls, Fall Creek Falls, South Cumberland State Park, Clinch Mountain, Sequatchie Valley and Cherohala Skyway.

According to Colour Blind Awareness, one in 12 men and one in 200 women are affected by color blindness.

Tennessee has been a Top 10 travel destination in the United States for four years running, according to TDTD. Also, Tennessee is the fastest-growing state for international tourists, with an increase of 38.7 percent from 2012 to 2017, TDTD said. Most of the visitors come from, in descending order, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, Mexico and Japan.

Source: Knoxville News Sentinel, by Chuck Campbell

The East Tennessee Economic Development Agency markets and recruits business for the 15 counties in the greater Knoxville-Oak Ridge region of East Tennessee. Visit www.eteda.org

 

Published November 28, 2018