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Comment by forgotusername | Hacker News Reader

You'd have thought the company would be capable of subtler PR than pimping an AR headset at a blindness awareness event.

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Blindness is defined as worse than 20/400 with the best correction possible. At the low end of the scale you could probably still focus on an HUD. Even with only the ability to sense light from dark I could see these being useful.

You know, now you've got me wondering. If glasses like this could be put into an area where a legally blind person could focus, could it show a video feed of what's ahead and allow them to see clearer?

Or am I misunderstanding just how bad "worse than 20/400" is?

If a HUD could focus it, then why couldn't corrective glasses?

Yeah, seems like a more salient benefit to the visually impaired from a HUD would be for a patient with significant damage to regions of their visual field. Then the computations available with the wearable could be used to apply a real-time transformation to the video so as to push more of the video stream's information into the regions of their visual field which still work.

Glasses focus the light into your eye, still relying on your eye to focus on distance. The HUD in my example would flatten the distance and show a 2D picture in front of your eye at a point where you can naturally focus.

Like I said, I don't know if this is possible.

This might work. My vision is probably in the 20/600 or much worse range (Though correctable with lenses).. and without corrective lenses I have maybe a 2-3 inch maximum focal distance. Though, I do find that with my corrective lenses I lose that focal distance and end up with a 6inch-ish minmum focal distant.

Glasses like this could take whatever you are looking at it and magnify it in the heads up display. It could probably even be selective about it, e.g. only magnify and sharpen text that is at the center of your field of vision.

There are already assistive devices for people with visual impairments, but they are clunky and cost a LOT.

I suspect this comment is largely misunderstood by those responding about the usefulness of such a device to the legally blind.

The point is that it's not subtle as far as PR goes, not that "legally blind people have no use for this thing".

No, it's not insensitive. These glasses could be a huge breakthrough for the vision or hearing impaired: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3806640

But, but... outrage!

I think that's exactly why he used it there. This device could be amazing for blind people if it has accessibility features built-in (like the voice controlling part).

An ear piece would suffice for the blind, unless they need to use the nose bridge as a stand.

That's true but the advantage with a generic device is that, same applications can be used by both normal and blind people with a (hope fully) little tweaking on the app's part. For example, if it is a route finding app, a tweak to provide more frequent and detailed audio when set in disabled/blind mode will make it compatible for a larger user base.

If they release some device only for the blind , then you will have to find developers who are willing to develop to a niche market.

You mean like the Opti Grab? We learned a lot about blindness from having guardianship of our blind teenage nephew for a year. True, the ear piece would be the big benefit for him (though one eye was very slightly sensitive to light). Others at his school had varying degrees of low vision and might at least benefit from bright flashes of light. But the big gain would be something that describes his environment out loud. Blind people do still aim their faces toward things. And it's much better than a similar capability in a handheld device such as the iPhone or iPod Touch, because for the blind, orienting a handheld device correctly can be a major problem. We turned on the accessibility features for our nephew's iPod, but the thing would switch from landscape to portrait as he turned his hand slightly. Head-mounted is the way to go. And for the sighted, it will be great for games, as I found out from the prototype glasses I got: http://youtu.be/lQGpOibUsyo

Well there is something questionable there, but I could imagine it being useful for partially sighted people. Being legally blind does not necessarily mean you 100% cannot see.

Augmented vision technology makes perfect sense for blind and vision impaired users. For example, the latest version of Google Goggles (http://www.google.com/mobile/goggles) performs image recognition on the live camera feed and speaks out the results as it recognizes items such as banknotes. Running the same software on a headset would allow the user to receive an aural interpretation of text or images around them.

I'm responding 9 hours after your comment. A healthy discussion has evolved over all of the utility a legally blind person could find in this device. I would say this was a major PR success.

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