CORNWALL, Ontatrio – Ayden Brunet and his father Eric were showing off his new eSight glasses at the Codes Heroes summer camp.
Ayden, 11, suffers from a rare congential eye defect which severely limits his field of vision and ability to focus.
Nystagmus prevents Ayden from seeing more than 20 feet in front of him. Without his eSight glasses he needs to sit in the middle of the front row in class at school to see the board and needs to be only a few feet away from the TV.
“I realized that without my glasses, to me things look like they do in Minecraft, all pixelated,” he said.
A little over a month ago, his parents started fundraising money to get their son eSight glasses after an article about the technology was shared with them by Kelly Bergeron, the founder of Code Heroes. A full set of eSight equipment costs roughly $13, 000.
The technology itself, developed by the eSight Corporation, has a battery pack, controller and camera visor. All of this equipment not only allows Ayden to see more clearly, but he can also zoom up to 24 times and take still images to view later.
Right now though, he is still new to the technology and is working with a mentor to learn how to properly use it.
“They’ve asked us to take baby steps with them at first,” Ayden said.
Ayden said that while he is now able to sit at the back of the movie theatre to watch films, that he does feel a little boxed in with the lack of peripheral vision.
Right now Ayden is limited to using his eSight for one hour a day for two weeks while he works with his mentor, who is an former police sergeant. Ayden himself hopes to go into the police force one day.
While he was at Code Heroes on Friday, he demonstrated the new technology to the kids at the summer camp and Kelly Bergeron said that they were very interested in the new revolutionary glasses.
