Kathy Bleitz suffers from a condition called Stargardt disease and has been legally blind since the age of 11. It’s an inherited degenerative disease that significantly reduces vision in the central part of the retina, but peripheral vision is sometimes retained.
IFLScience explained how some new technology actually allowed Bleitz to see her new baby:
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The electronic glasses, which are called eSight, combine multiple different components that can be adjusted by the user to enhance the quality of an image reaching the eye. The headset, which is mounted on lens frames, houses a high-definition camera which feeds real-time video footage onto organic light-emitting diode screens placed directly in front of the user’s eyes. A separate handheld device allows the user to adjust and magnify the image so that they can gain the best possible picture of the world around them.
“Interestingly, eSight’s many unique features—such as 14-times zoom, image contrast enhancement, reverse color display, etc—enable eSight users to actually see many things that normally-sighted people cannot see,” members of the company wrote on their website.
The glasses are pretty cumbersome and currently cost $15,ooo, but both the size and price will likely reduce with further development. Hopefully more people will be able to have such a touching experience like this in the near future.