There is a chap called William Elliott on Quora who writes very eloquently about his experience of losing his sight, using a guide dog and being blind. He is finding the glasses very, very useful;
https://qr.ae/pFxFge
https://www.quora.com/profile/William-Elliott-29
Are smart glasses the next smartphone, or just another tech trend that will disappear?
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The author in his new smart glasses in September 2026. A birthday gift from my wife.
Image: I can be seen with a glass door and wall behind me. I am wearing glasses with a dark colored lens similar to sunglasses, but these are a pair of Meta Adventurer smart glasses.
Predicting the future is tough. But I’d say that smart glasses could actually stay around .
Now let’s get something straight from the start. I generally like technology. I am also legally blind and a little skeptical when it comes to hearing promises often made when a tech gadget is being sold to me.
I have owned a pair of Meta smart glasses for almost a month now, bought for me by my wife as a birthday present. I heard about them from her. I went to Best Buy with her. I talked with and questioned the sales rep with her. I tried them and liked them, liked the price and thought the benefits sounded pretty good, for my needs.
So she bought me the glasses.
Now I am not talking about the top end, the ones that have a built in computer monitor and capability of VR and games playing. No mine just have a camera, speakers in the arms and a microphone. Voice command ability, can be used as a phone or video and stills camera. The base line of A.I. and coming in at around $300.
By the way if you are a blind U.S. Veteran and have access to the Veterans Administration, VA, then speak to your VA advisor about Meta smart glasses. Blinded veterans may be elligible for a free pair of these glasses. Your blindness doesn’t even need to be service related. You just have to have to ask and you could be added to the waiting list as long as you are elligible. This may change but as I write in October 2026 it is still possible to apply via the VA.
So what can I use these glasses for?
Bear in mind that having this equipment on my face in a convenient form, a pair of glasses leaves me with both hands free. As a blind person one hand is always occupied for using a long white cane or better still working with my guide dog, Humboldt.
So first plus. No fiddling with apps on a cell phone, one handed and trying to swipe my way through a long list of apps to get the right one.
Smart glasses will call “Be My Eyes” via my phone on a voice command. As long as I have the app on my phone. Then they will use the smart glasses camera to send a picture of what I would see to the human volunteer who can help me. All hands free.
Did I mention how nice hands free is?
Also if I want to know what color shirt I want to wear today. Well I can ask the smart glasses and they will tell me. That’s another app or gadget they replace and are hands free.
I can ask the glasses read to read me printed text. They can even translate foreign text forms into my own English so want to read a Chinese text? Simply point the camera which is above the left eye and arm. and it will translate the Chinese characters into English in a few seconds.
I can ask the glasses to take a picture of a scene and tell me where the button for the street crossing is or that elevator button. No pressing on the person in front of me any longer. That’s embarassing.
I can read a menu, timetable, newspaper without asking my wife. That means a lot more freedom for both of us. Fifteen years and counting me asking, “What do I have to choose from?”
I can record videos and even use those videos in my public presentations or to illustrate things that I want to be sure I provide evidence of in my presentations. Nothing beats a first person perspective when showing people who are sighted the ways my guide dog or long white cane work in daily life.
I can tell my glasses to make appointments in my diary, and they do. Hands free.
I can ask about how my investments are doing.
I can listen to my life soundtrak through my favorite playlists.
I can hear news reports, if I really want to get depressed, so much positive in ones life one needs some really bad news about the world.
I can navigate by GPS. and yes that is also Hands Free, no need to hold my phone up to my ear and walk and command my guide dog while, losing the grip on my phone and screaming to the blind gods, “Why me?”
I can go shopping and ask “What am I looking at?” and iit will be photographed and reported back to me in a few seconds. “It’s either a can of beans or Cokca Cola You’re holding the can with the base to the camera” Oh well I am new at this and need to practice. I haven’t really shopped for myself in over fifteen years.
I am not sure what else they do. They keep teaching me more daily. as yet I don’t know everything.
Oh! I am a gardener and they can identify plants for me, give me notes on planting, pest diagnosis and what I need to care about in the next few weeks in my garden.
So will the smart glasses fade?
Possibly if you buy them for the gimmick. To claim that you own a pair and you tire of not being to take a real selfie.
But for me. I have too many uses for them. No they will become a daily tool for me to use. A hands free tool. That is way too convenient for me to ignore.
People might claim that they are an infringement of other personal privacy, but unless you are being photographed through your house window, you’ll be in public or with people who you know. No privacy can be expected in a public place. I don’t know how many selfies taken by others I have appeared in since the first phone appeared with a built in camera, and prior to that, how many stranger who wandered into the frame of your film camera holiday snaps are now treasured residents of your family photograph albums. Public privacy is a myth so let it go.
So I see them immediately being a gimmick that in the long term will become the new smart phone that you wear on your face and is not carried in a pocket.
