What turned out to be the coolest gift was the color blind corrective sunglasses my wife and I got for our oldest son. I have no clue how the science behind them works because when I put them on nothing changed, yellow still looked yellow, blue was still blue and so on but I'm not color blind either however when our son put them on they about blew him away because for the first time in his life he was able to see color. In between all the "is that what that really looks like?" and "WOW" comments it was also a very moving moment that almost brought our 24 year old son to tears especially when he saw the colors of a sunset that evening. I told him to please not wear them while driving until he got over the WOW factor but nope he didn't listen. I got a call from him telling me how he momentarily didn't know what to do when he encountered his first traffic light and saw the green light as actually being green. 
The glasses weren't cheap either but seeing how well the worked for our son they were worth every penny.
That's fascinating Scott, where did you get the colorblind sunnies? I'm color blind too, but not as bad as your son, I have problems distinguishing between black/dark blue/dark green etc, can't read the numbers in a "Confetti" test for crap, etc.
I won a pair of french sunglasses many years ago, they had brown lenses, and they really brightened up the colors of everything for me, I almost had a moment like your son did when he saw color for the first time!
Tell your son that color blind guys are very handy as forward scouts in Special Forces, as they can see "thru" camouflage. What that means is that a color blind guy's brain isn't confused by artificial colors and shapes like that of a guy with normal color perception. Also, color blind guys have got way better night vision than normal guys, so it's almost like a super power, especially now that he can get color perception correcting glasses. Cheers, Terry.
