The ability to see the world around us is a sensory quirk that most of us take for granted. But, I'm sure that if you woke up to a perpetually dark world suddenly, you would've wished you had clung to those illuminated moments a bit harder, being a bit more present in them. Now, imagine bringing a child into the world but never meeting him, visually speaking. Unfortunately, that's the reality for many legally blind mothers, but tech company eSight aim's to change that.
Kathy Beitz, a legally blind soon-to-be mother, has been without vision since she was a child. But she desperately wanted to witness her own child being placed into her maternal arms. And, thanks to the generosity of eSight, she was loaned a pair of the revolutionary glasses for the special occasion.
And, having never seen a baby before in her life, one could only imagine the thoughts racing through Beitz's mind as she looked down at the life she gave birth to.
"For the first baby that I get to actually look at being my own is very overwhelming," Beitz says. "Even to look at my husband looking at him was such a good feeling. I got to fall in love with him."
But, the tear-jerking dialogue didn't stop there. Courtesy of a viral video uploaded onto YouTube, viewers, family members and the company alike were able to see exactly what Beitz saw for the brief moments that she was able to spend in the sight of her newborn baby boy.
"Look at how long his toes are," Beitz says. "And I can see he's got my lips, they're my lips." A box of tissues, please.
Her older sister, Yvonne Felix, was responsible for uploading the video to YouTube; Felix is also legally blind. But Felix hasn't just been filming in her spare time. Kathy's sister recently created the startup called #MakeBlindnessHistory, focusing on raising money to help legally blind individuals afford the $15,000 glasses.
"When we finish raising money for Kathy's eSight, we will raise money for another blind individual's eSight," Felix says. "Then another, and another, and another. We won't stop until every blind person who wants to see, gets eSight."
eSight combines advanced camera displaying technology with real-time video, providing wearers with a picture of the world around them.
For more information on how you can aid in helping others make blindness a past aliment, visit #MakeBlindnessHistory for details.
