UofA Invents Glasses That Help Blind See

www.USAToday.com

www.USAToday.com

Alexis Bitnar, Reporter

The UofA has come up with glasses that help the low vision and legally blind see. A professor of optical sciences named Hong Hua worked with graduate student Jason Kuhn to come up with the latest generation of best-in-class near-eye optics. The glasses allow people with low vision and who are legally blind to see, be mobile, and live every day of life more independently.

esighteyewear.com

The glasses are designed with an exit pupil hole shaped like an almond. They work by capturing images with a small camera then converting them, then projecting them into each screen on both eyes and you can zoom in and out and adjust the contrast to get a clearer image on an attached remote. In an interview with Rosa Henderson on geek wire, she said: “People need to be more open-minded with the way technology is now. Anybody could just do anything.” The unique thing about these is that it can instantly auto-focus between short-range, mid-range, and long-range vision and can also control color, contrast, focus, brightness and magnification up to 24X. The headset costs $10,000 which is down from its original price of 15,000. The glasses mainly help people with macular degeneration, glaucoma, retinal detachment, cataracts, retinopathy and more.

The headset uses real video images with no lag time so all the pictures are real-time; the headset also has WiFi, Bluetooth and can even take pictures. Ms. Yvonne Felix, one of eSight’s users said, “I was diagnosed with Stargardt Disease after being hit by a car at the age of seven. For over 25 years, I lived without any useful sight. I will never forget the day I tried an early prototype of eSight three years ago. That was the first time I saw my husband and two sons.”

This is an amazing thing to think of and now be able to actually see.