A blind mother was able to see her newborn son for the first time thanks to a pair of special glasses. The eSight glasses capture an image and video and then present it in real time with enhancements for people with low vision. These enhancements make the eye perceive more than it would have otherwise been able to.
The woman, 29-year old Kathy Beitz, started losing her sight in grade school. She has Stargardt disease which is a genetic condition which causes macular degeneration. In a nutshell the condition puts up a blind spot that obscures most of her vision.
Speaking to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Beitz said that if she were looking at a person she wouldn’t see their head and shoulders, “I don’t see any of that,” she says.
That changed when she put on a pair of eSight glasses. She tells the CBC that she will never forget seeing 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 now uses the glasses to care for her child. A spokesman for eSight explained how these glasses work and the fact that they have been available in the market for about a year now. A pair costs around $15,000. [photo/video credit: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation]
Kathy and her sister Yvonne run a fundraising website called Make Blindness History. Its a platform that aims to help people get the technology that has changed their life: eSight, pledges start from $1 and go directly to pay for a blind individual’s eSight.
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