Optometry: Reading Glasses for the Blind

People with corrected vision of 20/200 or worse are legally blind. Even with magnifying glasses or special reading spectacles, they cannot read ordinary newspaper or magazine print. Some 420,000 Americans fall into this category; to help them see, Manhattan Optometrist Dr. William Feinbloom has developed “reading binoculars” that magnify 3.5 times and enable many of the legally blind who are not totally sightless to read with relative ease.

Feinbloom’s binoculars are telemicroscopes mounted bifocal-style in the lower portion of ordinary prescription glasses. Made up of four lenses (one of them a “doublet” of two lenses cemented together) separated by three sealed air spaces, the tiny, high-powered units not only provide magnification but also correct aberrations. They are focused so that the lines of vision of both eyes converge at the normal reading distance of 16 inches. Since he developed the new glasses (price $300), Feinbloom has tried them out on 360 “blind” people. He has found fewer than ten whom they failed to help. Though designed especially for reading, they have proved useful in cooking, sewing, shopping—anything, says Feinbloom, that requires “good close vision.”