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Comment by hyperbovine | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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