"At Meta Connect 2025, I got a first glimpse of the Meta Ray-Ban Display, the company's first pair of smart glasses with a built-in monocular display. There's no beating around the bush. The demos I got were nothing short of impressive. But something about having an invisible display and the ability to appear present while secretly doing something else under the table - is eerie. I'll dive into the questions these glasses raise in the coming weeks, but today I want to focus on one way that Meta's glasses are genuinely making life better: accessibility."
""For me, missing both my legs means that obviously walking is just a bit more difficult and more hazardous than other people," Jon White, an inspirational speaker and Paralympic trainee who became a triple amputee after serving as a British Royal Marine, tells me in an interview at Meta's headquarters ahead of the announcement. "Anything that means I'm not looking at my phone [so] I've got my head up, looking around me is much better.""
The Meta Ray-Ban Display incorporates a built-in monocular display that produced impressive demos at Meta Connect 2025. The invisible in‑view display enables users to engage with information while appearing present, creating unsettling privacy and social‑presence implications. The glasses deliver concrete accessibility benefits by allowing hands‑free interactions, keeping users' heads up, and reducing the need to handle phones. For individuals with mobility or limb differences, those features improve safety and usability, enabling message responses without occupying a remaining hand. Broader ethical questions about surveillance, consent, and shifting social norms need addressing as adoption grows.
Read at The Verge
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