Name: How the low-vision community embraced AI smart glasses | The Vergecast
Uploaded: 2025-07-18T17:52:50.000Z
Duration: 1 h 13 min 34 s
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Welcome to the VergeCast, the flagship podcast of what AI smart glasses are actually good for.

I'm your friend Vee, and we are in week two of Hot Girl VergeCast Summer.

Anyway, today's show is really exciting and quite personal for me, actually.

A few months ago, I was reviewing the Meta smart glasses, and I kind of flippantly commented that I didn't understand why anyone would need AI to give a really obvious description of something that they're looking at.

Well, a bunch of visually impaired VergeCast listeners and Verge readers wrote in and said, actually, me, me, I am the person that this helps.

And so, you know, a few of them actually challenged me to rethink my framing.

And I said, you know what, you're right, because here at the Verge, we do love good feedback.

So today, we are talking about smart glasses and accessibility.

First, we'll hear from one of the listeners who wrote into me, and he's going to tell us how the Meta glasses has changed his life for the better.

And then I'll talk to the CEO of Be My Eyes.

That's a company that provides AI and live volunteer services for people with visual impairments.

They're integrated into those smart glasses, and we'll hear about how they're thinking about how this technology can help the visually impaired going forward.

And finally, my colleague, Mia Sato, will be joining me to answer a very spicy and not potentially not safe for work question about smart glasses.

All that coming up right after the break.

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He's one of the listeners who wrote in to me about how AI smart glasses changed his life.

He also sent me a picture of his guide dog, Noel, who is cute as a button, and we'll put a picture of her into the show notes.

So Jason, this is kind of a really special for me kind of interview because I do read all the reader feedback we get.

Maybe not the comments sometimes, but usually if it comes into my email, I definitely try and take time to read it.

So when you reached out to me, it was because I had done a hands-on of the Meta AI, Live

AI feature, and I sort of just kind of posed it in the framing as a solution in search of a problem.

I was kind of asking, like, who is asking for this?

And you sent such a thoughtful email about like, hey, I use this tech.

This tech actually dramatically impacts my life.

So I guess what I wanted to ask you is, like, what drew you to the Meta Ray Bans in the first place?

And, like, can you explain the appeal of Live AI for your life?

In my life, if it's not something that I can perceive with my remaining vision clearly,

I need to ask somebody, hey, do you mind telling me what this is?

Not everybody is capable of saying, hey, you know, this is such and such.

Having the Live AI, I can go into environments where I would need a chaperone.

It could be going to a restaurant and I can engage Live AI and ask it to read the menu or tell me what's in front of me so that I'm not inconveniencing my companions and I'm getting on in a normal life.

I have a menu that's in front of me that I can actually do something with.

It's not just, I guess, a fan in front of me while everybody else is picking out their stuff.

That's, you know, that's definitely not something that I, as a sighted person, would think about because me using that feature, it was very much like a, well, yeah, I can read the thing in front of me, but, you know, I think when we talk about blind and low vision people, that is a wide spectrum of, you know, ability to see.

So could you maybe describe what your condition is most like so that our listeners understand?

Because I think when us sighted people hear blind and low vision, we just think of the main image that most people think of, which is someone who can't see at all.

Vision loss in general affects a wide variety of people from no light perception at all to somebody who has low vision, which I believe is defined as 20-60.

And that's at a point where a person can no longer drive.

In my particular case, I contracted a staph infection in 2015 and it affected my blood pressure.

I had two emergency surgeries to correct it.

And it essentially damaged the retina in the back of my eyes and three separate injuries that occurred over the course of a year.

And the official diagnosis that I got was NAION, which stands for non-arctoretic ischemic optic neuropathy.

What that means to the average person is an optic nerve stroke.

My retinas, which would normally be in the shape of a volcano where your central vision is a very tightly compacted group of nerve cells in the middle, mine are entirely flat.

So what that translates for me is in my left eye, I have no light perception from about 11 o'clock to about 4 o'clock.

And then from 4 o'clock to 7 o'clock in my left eye, I can look at things.

If I look past it with my eccentric vision, I can still perceive it.

I can still read things if the text is large enough.

If I have it white text on black, it makes it easier to see.

In my right eye, I have no central vision.

And again, when I look at something, it disappears.

But if I look past it with my eccentric vision, I can see something there.

Then everything else, for lack of a better term, is looking through a plastic baggie.

Everybody agrees that it's clear, but if you fold it, you really can't see through it at any distance.

So for me, I have to be about 8 to 10 inches from a screen with large text for it to be useful to me.

In the wild, if I go to a restaurant, let's say a buffet, I really don't want to get my face 8 to 10 inches from the food to see what's there.

And there's a reason the sneeze hoods are there, to keep human contact from your food.

So having the glasses, if I go into this buffet, I can ask it, what's in front of me?

And it'll tell me, okay, well, you have this option in front of you.

So I don't have to rely on people with my residual vision in the wild.

We have a walking lifestyle in my neighborhood.

And I have some great friends, which will take me out to do my shopping.

It could be at Lowe's to get supplies that I use for my crafting.

It could be a trip to Dollar Tree to get some things that I need.

Everything is the same in all the stores.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

How the low-vision community embraced AI smart glasses | The Vergecast

obvious

bunch

access

intimate