A black mark on #Costco for selling pervert glasses. This is from their latest ad
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@Nonya_Bidniss What you call "pervert glasses" give me greater #accessibility and independence as a #blind person. Good on Costco for stocking them. If you disagree, perhaps you can share your contact details so I can call on you any time at all to have things described, text read aloud, etc.
@VE3RWJ @Nonya_Bidniss I agree: smart glasses in general, can give significant accomodation for blind people's independence; I'm blind myself, and feel very scared about all this debate about glasses, apparently addressed toward extremism, by both parties: Meta, who is not genuinely interested in accessibility, it's a sort of "side effect" for them, a vulnerable niche of market to exploit. In fact I didn't buy meta as they have been the first to cut off diversity inclusion programs even before Trump sat in the white house again; they don't do enough against hate speech, about accessibility on their main platforms (facebook and similar), they don't respond to accessibility reported issues, but then they have agreements with blind associations and veterans to give glasses for a cheaper price. This would make us dependant on them, relying just on their company as they are the most mass-spreading hardware piece. And allowing normalization of mass surveillance.
On the other side, however, I find those anti-glasses EXTREMISTS.
I'm the very first person concerned about my privacy, not wanting to be surveilled by a big corporation; but the risk of the "pervert" narration, of prohibiting those glasses around, is that blind people using them as an aid, risk to be stigmatized further.
We should all collaborate, in order to find a shared position. Defend privacy, defend us against monopoly, defend blind people's right to use safer tech, and overall defend people with disability from being used by big tech to make surveillance accepted in name of accessibility and whatever. We want accessibility, we don't want mass surveillance.
@elettrona No one's against assistive tech. The issue is that these specific glasses are designed to look as much like 'regular' glasses as possible, to make it difficult for others to know what they are. They are designed for perverts, maybe BY perverts. They are DELIBERATELY designed that way. This tech could take many forms, but this specific version is very clearly designed to be used covertly.
@elettrona @Nonya_Bidniss Well, there are always these. I gather they are still being developed and are not widely available just yet. At least they aren't sold by a big evil corporation.
https://agiga.ai/
@VE3RWJ @Nonya_Bidniss Yeah, I have heard about Agiga Echo vision and saw a review on YouTube some days ago; as the reviewer noticed, they still allucinate a lot.
I have a pair of glasses called Ally Solos Glasses, coming from an European company called Envision Technologies, from Rotterdam. But the detail is that they have been silent since April 2026, while before we were used to monthly webinars and newsletter.
Btw, EchoVision is American and not yet available in Europe. And, not to be racist towards America, but USA federal disability rights, and consequently all companies working on this area, are far from granted. So if possible I try to stay far from American-only products. Except, unfortunately, for Braille displays.
