Eyewear is essential for vision correction. However, the sector has evolved drastically to the point where it has made great strides to provide for various, nuanced vision correction issues.
We touched on this point in our previous post, Tech Gadgets, Games, Robots, and Digital World: The Future Analysis, where we reported on the growth of wearables as a major driver in tech innovation, especially as personal tech becomes a more integral part of daily life. Part of this trend has manifested in augmented reality (AR) glasses and other accessories being connected to how individuals engage with health tracking, communication, and information.
These features can profoundly improve one’s quality of life, so it makes sense that the next logical progression in the eyewear industry is to focus on specific struggles impeding accessibility. Pew Research Center notes that 42.5 million Americans live with some form of disability, and there is a significant intersection between this and people who need vision correction. After all, 63.7% of adult Americans wear prescription glasses. As such, the eyewear sector is in an exciting phase of progress, with various products already available in the market pushing the envelope in addressing various accessibility needs. Here are a few of them:
Eyewear for the Hearing Impaired
According to the National Institutes of Health, over 37 million adults in the US aged 18 and over report some trouble hearing. For those over 60, more than a fourth report disabling hearing loss. What’s worth noting is that about 1.5 million people live with both significant hearing and vision loss. As noted by multiple studies, these factors can lead to a drastic decrease in quality of life.
Fittingly, eyewear products have been at the forefront of developing solutions for this overlap. One provider that’s just recently gotten its FDA approval is Nuance Audio. Inspired by a need to create sleek and empowering tools, they developed eyewear frames that can provide prescription vision correction and advanced hearing assistive technology. Using low-latency speakers and directional microphones, the frames offer beamforming directional amplification for mild to moderate hearing loss. With a partner app, users can adjust volume, balance out background noise, and toggle different hearing focus modes.
Meanwhile, for people with hearing loss, which impacts communication, TranscribeGlass offers live text-to-speech transcription. These glasses use an external microphone to pick up sentences and words, which are then displayed in green text on the lenses. This essentially provides closed captions for wearers in real-time through a subscription service, with a partner app that allows users to adjust volume and pick-up.
Improving Hands-free Assistance for Visual and Motor Impairment
Eyewear has also expanded to provide more robust solutions for vision and related motor difficulties, given that these can impose many limitations and hurdles for a variety of activities. As such, wearables are a great assistance that doesn’t feel more unwieldy than it has to be.
The Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses are a popular frame in the wearable tech market today, crossing the 1-million mark in sales despite being displayless. In terms of innovation for accessibility, this is largely tied to its Meta AI integration. The glasses can be controlled hands-free with voice commands to set reminders, send communications, and start recording in the line of sight of the frames. Beyond that, its AI can also read signs, identify basic items in the surroundings, and scan QR codes and other visual aspects in your environment. The same glasses have also partnered with Be My Eyes. Through this, users can contact a sighted volunteer who can help them navigate their surroundings or complete tasks in real-time.
Even more comprehensive frames have also hit the market with the likes of eSight, which is meant to address visual impairments and low vision for those with significant central vision loss. By stimulating synaptic activity from what remains of the wearer’s eyes’ photoreceptor function, the glasses then produce high-resolution imagery to compensate for any gaps in the field of view. This is aided by a smart algorithm working with cameras and low-latency screens.
In light of so much innovation in the eyewear space, accessibility is becoming a more feasible aspect of daily life. With further development and resources, it’s safe to assume that these products will bring forth even more advancements across all demographics who need them.
