The sight of your newborn is an incredible experience. Seeing them move and grasp your hand for the first time is nothing short of a miracle. But imagine a mother never seeing seeing her newborn child due to blindness. 29-year-old woman Kathy Beitz began to lose her eyesight when she was just in primary school through Stargardt disease, a genetic condition causing degeneration of the eyes. The condition creates a blindspot that basically obscures most of her vision. On the birth of her son, she thought she would never get to see his face. But something changed for her.
For the first time, she was able to see her most precious gift, her newborn baby, thanks to the eSight glasses. These miraculous glasses capture an image or video then enhances the image in realtime, allowing the eye of people with low vision to perceive more than it would normally be able to.
Beitz stated that she cannot actually see the head or shoulders of anyone she is looking at; but with the eSight glasses, she could see her newborn son for the first time. “I remember his little mouth and his gums and his itsy bitsy tongue when he would cry,” she stated in an interview.These glasses, though extremely helpful, cost over $15,000. However, the ability to see and look after her son is immeasurable. Spokesman for eSight explained how these glasses operate and how they have been available for over a year now.
Currently, Kathy and her sister Yvonne are running a fundraising site online called Make Blindness History. As Kathy has benefited so much from this technology, she aims to help others get their hands on it to so that they can also benefit from sight. eSight pledges start from $1 and the money goes to pay for individuals who need these glasses.
I feel like we are blessed to live in a world that has the tools and knowledge to continue to grow technology to its highest potential. Recently, I heard about a similar blind assistive technology that also works for people with no vision. It's a tiny camera attachment with powerful features such as reading, identifying products, money notes and even recognizing people's faces in real time. These glasses for visual disability is the product of cutting edge artificial vision and machine learning. It can read text from any surface whether it be an email, a street sign or a newspaper.
ReplyDelete