Ashley Barby
of Toronto's
Specsy shows off
the company's 3-D
printing/modelling
technology for
eyewear at Inside
Optics 2017.
through browsers like Chrome, Safari
or Firefox on tablets or desktop com-
puters, with an iPad app expected
this fall.
The six-month-old company saw a lot
of attention at their Inside Optics
booth. Coming from a background in
dentistry, bringing the technology to
the optical sector was a natural
progression, from creating 3-D images
of patient's mouths, to using it for
optical fitting and sizing. Barby said
to their knowledge, Specsy is the first
company to offer such a service.
The Canadian National Institute for
the Blind's (CNIB) Jason Fayre, the
national lead for accessibility and as-
sistive technology said there's a trend
now to use smartphones to help people
with their daily vision needs and to
navigate their communities.
An app like iDentifi – Object Recogni-
tion for Visually Impaired (Apple
devices), uses artificial intelligence to
enable a visually impaired user to take a
photo of “virtually any” object or piece
of text, and the program then tells the
user a description of the object in an
image or dictates the text in the image
to the user.
“That type of thing can be really useful,”
Fayre said in an interview with Optical
Prism. Another tool he uses harnesses
live people to assist the visually
impaired, with apps like BeMyEyes
for iPhone, which allows the user to
request assistance for the item they
need to see. A volunteer receives a
notification for help and a live video
connection is established to help
answer the question.
20 EYE FOCUS | June Digital 2017
BeSpecular (Apple and Android) also
uses live people, which allows a user
to take a photo of an item and attach
a question, which is then sent to the
BeSpecular volunteer community of
'sightlings', who can the reply to the
user by voice or text message within
minutes. The user can then rate the
usefulness of the interaction as well.
“These are all about fostering
independence,” said Fayre. “Both my
partner and I are both totally blind, so
we don't have somebody here that can
look at stuff for us on a regular basis.
So these types of apps are super useful.”
He also uses apps that read text back
to him through just the click of a pho-
to, with the KNFB Reader on Android
and Apple devices, and Windows 10.
“A few years ago we'd have to find a
friend, or bring a volunteer in, but
now we can do these types of things
independently,” he said.
Other companies like Hoya Vision
Care's HVC app (Vision Consultant
Viewer) is available on iPad with fully
interactive Augmented Reality for con-
sumer-oriented sales consultation.
The app offers visual effects of different
lenses, to help consumers understand
the difference between them, including
modules on progressive lenses, single
vision lenses, indoor lenses, anti-re-
flective coatings, polarized lenses and
photochromic Lenses.
Zeiss offers an Eye Strain Test App
is designed help your eyes switch focus
from a smartphone to a distance of 20
feet and vice-versa in order to precisely
measure the strain on your eyes.
Eye strain and fatigue can lead to eye
irritation, headaches and neck pain,
and the app helps consumers find out
how well their eyes are geared to the
challenges of modern life.
Numerous other apps are also available
for limiting blue light emitted by
smartphones via dimming applications.
Applications are also available to test
vision, like Canada's FYi Doctor's
Vision Test on Android, which offers a
number of short tests to check vision,
but stresses it's not considered an eye
exam and doesn't replace the need for
one by a qualified optometrist.
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