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Iceni Magazine | March 28, 2024

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Smart Glasses Help Blind Father Recognise His Children

A blind man is finally able to recognise his family again for the first time in 30 years thanks to a pair of £1,800 high-tech glasses.

Marc Bilton, 48, suffers from a degenerative eye condition which forced him to give up his job as a microbiologist and stop playing football with his sons.

But he’s been given a completely new lease of life after his wife discovered a pioneering pair of high-tech glasses which recognises faces and reads for him.

Mark said: “Immediately I was able to read things that I couldn’t read before – I can read a paper now.

“It’s the facial recognition that had a massive impact.

“I struggle to see colours and definition and cannot see faces.

“It is just liberating that I don’t need to wait for people to say or I work out from the conversation I’m having who I’m talking to.”

The father-of-four added: “As my eyes have gone my ability to lip read has gone and that’s made things particularly difficult.

“It’s given back an interest in reading and finding out information and a bit of independence.

“It has also given me dignity – when I’m talking to people that I’ve already met I’m not asking then who they are.”

Marc, from Dunstable, Beds., who was also born partially deaf, was 19 when he was diagnosed with genetic condition Retinitis Pigmentosa that made him slowly lose his sight.

His OrCam glasses have a tiny, fixed camera which is attached by a wire to a computer in his pocket and a small speaker perched next to his ear which “talks” to him.

The camera is programmed to recognise faces that are programmed into its memory and starts reading to him when he points his finger at text.

He said: “People often describe it as tunnel vision – but with that you’re aware of the darkness around and the light at the end of the tunnel – my consciousness removes all of the blackness.

“My brain is actually filling in the holes that it’s not able to see.

“It’s very difficult. I used to do a lot of sport in my youth and it made things difficult.

“Squash was the first thing that went and as time has gone on playing football with the kids was difficult. I now play visually impaired tennis but that is more to do with the hearing of the ball.”

Marc said he used conventional glasses and learnt to lip-read as a child but was devastated and almost dropped out of university when he was diagnosed with the inherited condition.

“I was studying a microbiology degree so it seemed a bit pointless to do something which was very sight-focused,” said Marc.

“But I had a very good professor and I ended up working in the NHS as a microbiologist.”

After finishing his degree at Lancashire Polytechnic, Marc worked at the Withington Hospital in south Manchester as a clinical microbiologist and married his wife Ruth.

They had four children but he was forced to retire in 1992 and became a teacher in hospitals and secondary schools in the South of England.

He medically retired from teaching in 2008 as he lost the ability to tell colours, faces or even read large font text.

Around 200 people now use OrCam glasses in the UK since his wife saw an advert for the device on Facebook two years ago and travelled to London for tests.

Marc said: “At first we were a bit dubious because it was almost too good to be believable and you have to be careful with what you find on Facebook.

“When we met the people from OrCam we knew it wasn’t a con, they had a cupboard full of devices.

“The amount of technology, effort and money that would have gone into developing the product, we knew it was a legitimate product.

“It’s not actually glasses, it is a tiny camera device that attaches to a pair of glasses.

“The glasses were £1,800 which is quite expensive but I believe it is money well spent.

“The device has a tiny smart camera that recognises faces and texts and then explains what I am looking at.

“I set up the device and programmed the information so that it is able to recognise faces that I know.

“It takes pictures of people and words and relays the words back to me in my voice, if someone comes towards me it will do a facial recognition, I can sit in a room with people now and I will know who is there.

“There is nothing else out there like this, I am now able to read letters, books and newspapers without having to ask someone to help me.

“It has not made me totally independent but it has allowed me to do some of the things I could not do before, and it has helped me a lot.”

Marc now hopes the pioneering technology will be updated to recognise anyone who he adds to his social media accounts as online facial recognition technology improves.

“If they could plug the device into social media and have it upload my contacts it would make it so much easier,” he said.

ENDS


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