Blindness first crept up on Yvonne Felix when she was just seven years old. That’s when she was hit by a car that she never saw coming.“I was diagnosed with juvenile macular degeneration,” says the now 36-year old mother of two, who is legally blind. “By the time I was 13, I lost whatever sight I had centrally. By my late teens and early 20’s I was using a cane and braille. It was very lonely and isolating.”

Yvonne Felix has been legally blind since age 7. The new electronic eSight 3 glasses allow her to see.

ESight 3, a visor-like headset that uses a high-speed, high-definition camera, has changed the way the world looks for Felix. Where she once saw blurry shadows, she now sees details, like the expression on a person's face.“I can see everything, your eyes, that you’re smiling, the pattern on your blouse,” Felix describes as she demonstrates the new eSight 3 glasses last week in Oakland, Calif.

The headset looks like a cross between a pair of everyday sunglasses and a set of virtual reality goggles. They’re big, but not obnoxiously huge, and fit over the wearer’s prescription glasses via a pair of elastic, magnetic bands. On the front is a1080p camera that grabs a live video feed of everything in sight, pipes it down to a processing unit that tucks into a pocket or purse, then sends it back to a pair of OLED screens. The person wearing the headset sees full color video images clearly, with no lag time, and can zoom in. He or she can also capture photos and video with the device.

The Canadian company behind the headset is trying to change that. “What’s really unique about this device,” eSight CEO Brian Mech explained, “is that it lets Yvonne instantly auto-focus between short-range vision like reading a book or texting on a smartphone, to mid-range vision, seeing faces or watching TV, to long-range vision, such as looking down a hallway or outside a window.”

Each person who uses eSight 3 can control color, contrast, focus, brightness and magnification (24X). “It’s worked for 70% of people who’ve tried it on and allowed people with traumatic eye injury,some forms of glaucoma, and[more than a dozen other]conditions to see instantly.”
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Source: http://amp.usatoday.com/story/97960470/

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