Eyewear for the legally blind launched by Ottawa-based technology company

TORONTO – Emma-Rose Gibson can see clearly no more than three centimetres in front of her, but a new device is allowing the nine-year-old girl to watch TV.

The legally blind Grade 4 student, who is diagnosed with optic nerve hypoplasia, is one of the first users of the eSight eyewear, a pair of computerized glasses launched today in Toronto.

The device — made by Ottawa-based eSight Corporation — reconfigures images captured by its high-definition camera in a way to optimize a user’s vision.

The processed images are then fed into two LED screens in front of the user’s eyes.

Gibson has been using the device since May and says it allows her to participate fully in class and grants her a degree of mobility she didn’t have before.

The Canadian National Institute for the Blind says eSight eyewear is an exciting product that can enable some people to recapture activities they haven’t experienced in decades.

But they say the device — which costs about $10,000 — still relies on the wearer’s sight, and is designed to help those with partial sight, and not the completely blind.