Animated Images Displayed on Lenses to Help Capture Attention
Making eye contact is challenging for many children with autism. The inability to maintain eye contact can prevent children from developing meaningful social relationships. To assist with this dilemma, an engineering team at Brigham Young University (BYU) developed a unique pair of eyeglasses that display animated images on eyeglass lenses to increase engagement and ease children’s tension as they work on eye contact skills. BYU’s special spectacles utilize two LCD screens that can switch back and forth from high to low opacity. When the lenses are set to high opacity, an animated image catches the child’s attention. The glasses can then be changed to low opacity for the child to see the user’s eyes. The idea for these glasses came from a mother of a child with autism who, out of frustration, told a therapist, “If I could just have a pair of glasses that streamed content into the lens, I would wear them so I could finally see my boy’s eyes.”
