A project from ALT Eyes
ALT Eyes you can wear
Everything above the cane.
ALT Eyes is an app, and it works on the phone you have. What we're exploring next is a way to use it with your hands free: the same eyes, worn on your face, talking to the app on your phone. A cane finds the ground; this is for everything above it. It isn't ready, so it has awaitlist and nothing to buy.
Wearable visual aids have cost thousands of dollars, and several of the companies that made them are gone. Ours is deliberately simple — a camera, a depth sensor, a button and a speaker, with your phone doing the thinking — so it can cost a fraction of that and keep improving with every app update.
First, the Clip: for the glasses you already wear
Most people who are legally blind have some sight, and many wear prescription lenses. So before any frames, we're building a clip: one small yellow pod that snaps onto the arm of any glasses with a magnet. Your own frames, your own lenses.
- Camera and depth sensor — on the front tip of the pod, beside the lens at the hinge, facing forward: they see what you're facing, a few centimeters to the right of your eye line.
- Live light — on whenever the camera is on, wired to the camera's power.
- One button — press to read, hold to ask.
- Open-ear speaker — sits by your ear; nothing in it.
- Magnet mount — a slim plate sticks to the arm of your glasses; the pod snaps on and off in a second, and charges on a USB-C cable.
Concept drawing. A clip-on has no lenses to fit and no frame to size, which is why it comes first.
Then the frames
For people who'd rather have everything built in. Availability follows what we learn from the Clip.
- Camera — sees what you're facing. Frames are processed and thrown away.
- Depth sensor — a tiny time-of-flight chip that measures distance to things at head height, the ones a cane never finds.
- Live light — on whenever the camera is on. No exceptions, no software switch.
- Bone-conduction audio — you hear ALT Eyes and the street at the same time. Your ears stay open.
- One button — press to read, hold to ask.
Concept drawing. Final design will change as we test with real users.
Why they're yellow
Camera glasses have a reputation problem, and it's deserved. Glasses that look like ordinary glasses and secretly record have been banned from venues, and people are right to be uneasy about them.
ALT Eyes is the opposite, and it should look like the opposite. The yellow isn't for the wearer — many of our users won't see it. It's for everyone else in the room. Like a white cane or a guide-dog harness, it says at a glance: this person can't see, and this device is helping them.
The ALT Eyes pledge
- It cannot record. There is no video storage in the glasses and no "save" feature in the app. Each frame is analyzed and discarded.
- It cannot stream. Nothing goes to a social network, a cloud library or another person. Images leave your phone only to be described, and are not kept.
- The light is honest. The green light is wired to the camera's power. If the camera is on, the light is on.
- It says so out loud. Taking a description makes an audible cue, so people nearby hear it too.
- Faces are yours alone. It never identifies strangers. If you choose to enroll people you know, that happens with their consent, and the matching runs on your phone; no face ever leaves it.
- We publish how it works. The privacy design will be documented openly so venues, schools and employers can verify it rather than take our word.
Join the headset waitlist
You don't need this list to use ALT Eyes — the app is open now. Leave your email if you'd like to hear when the Clip and the frames are ready to try. Every name also helps us show funders, agencies and manufacturers that people want this. We're not taking money for hardware, and we won't until there is a ship date we believe.