ATU765 – eSight Updates with Roland Mattern

Hello, my name’s Roland Mattern, and I’m the director of sales at eSight by Gentex Corporation. And this is your Assistive Technology Update.

Hello and welcome to your Assistive Technology Update, a weekly dose of information that keeps you up to date on the latest developments in the field of technology designed to assist individuals with disabilities and special needs. I’m your host, Josh Anderson with the INDATA Project at Easterseals Crossroads in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana. Welcome to episode 765 of Assistive Technology Update. It is scheduled to be released on January 23rd, 2026. Today’s show, we’re super excited to welcome back Roland Mattern. He’s the director of sales for eSight and he is back on the show today to give us some updates on eSight and talk a little bit about the future of assistive technology. Today we’re going to go ahead and start off the show with Ali Gonzalez from Bridging Apps with an app worth mentioning.

This is Ale Gonzalez with Bridging Apps, and this is an app worth mentioning. This week’s featured app is called Apple Wallet. Apple Wallet is available on the iPhone and Apple Watch. Apple Wallet allows users to store information for credit cards, debit cards, store cards, boarding passes, movie tickets, reward cards, and more. When a user adds a credit or debit card, it is recognized as a digital version, which may be used in place of the physical card, thus providing more safety against scams. A favorite feature is being able to add boarding passes and event tickets. This allows the user to keep a digital copy of the ticket on their iPhone. It can securely be referenced when needed and keeps one less thing from being carried in hand. This is a great app for anyone who is looking to digitally manage physical cards. This app gives a secure option to pay without having a physical card in hand.

Apple Wallet is currently available for only iOS devices and is built in. For more information on this app and others like it, visit www.bridgingapps.org.

Listeners, please join me and welcoming Roland, director of sales at eSight, back to the show. Now, Roland was nice enough to join us back in September of ’24, and we’re excited to get updates and also discuss the changing landscape of assistive technology now and in the future. Roland, welcome back to the show.

Thank you very much for having me again. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Yeah, it is a pleasure to have you back. Before we get into talking about eSight and other things, can you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and your background?

Sure. I’ve got an extensive background in eyecare starting back in 2001, so I’m dating myself a little bit. I’ve worked in a medical device in the eyecare space since then, ranging from everything from cataract and refractive surgery to glaucoma, retina, and now in the low vision space with eSight.

Nice. And I’m sure that that kind of experience just brings a little bit, probably more of the understanding of the kind of needs that folks might have to what you do.

Yeah, especially the time I spent in the surgical retina business has really given me a keen understanding of not just the disease process and the anatomy that’s engaged in that disease process, but also the patient impact. And of course, in my tenure, a number of anti-VEGF medications have come to market and new versions have come to market that have helped control the progression of that disease over the years, and now also with geographic atrophy medications being able to be injected to slow disease progression.

But all those advancement in the pharmaceutical side haven’t really shown significant improvement in getting vision back to individuals. They’re incredibly effective at slowing disease progression and, in some cases, preventing vision loss altogether, but for those individuals who have significant vision loss, those pharmaceuticals are not as impactful, according to the data, in giving lines of vision back on the Snellen chart. And for those individuals, assistive technology is a wonderful choice because it gives them the opportunity to get back to an active participatory lifestyle that they’re used to, and of course, eSight Go, I may be biased, but it’s probably one of the best tools out there for individuals with central vision loss where we have shown in clinical study seven lines of distance acuity gained on a Snellen chart and six lines for near and 12 letters of contrast. So those are, on a visual metrics scale, significant improvements in vision for individuals with low vision, and thus gives them back the ability to read or see faces or pursue hobbies as they choose, and it’s wonderful to have been part of that journey for the last four and a half years.

Almost definitely. And since you kind of led me into it, tell us what is eSight?

So eSight is a wearable assistive device for central vision loss. And for those of your listeners, when you have central vision loss, if you imagine looking at one of your family members’ faces, if you have significant vision loss in the center of your vision, you would not be able to see any of their facial features at all. It would just be a blur of flesh tone, but your peripheral vision remains intact, so sort of the background around the outside of their head would be visible to you in your peripheral vision. This disease would prevent you from seeing television clearly, or reading, or seeing live shows, or watching sporting events. And our product is designed to leverage the photoreceptors outside of that macula, which is a damaged photosensitive tissue in the retina that is impacted by macular disease. We give folks that central perception back. We enhance the vision so they can read again and see faces again and pursue their hobbies.

So it’s very, very impactful. Imagine having the juvenile form of macular degeneration and losing your vision in your teens and 20s, you have children and you’ve never seen your children’s faces clearly, and then you use a product like eSight Go and now you can perceive your child’s face or your spouse’s face for the first time. It’s an incredibly emotional and life-changing impact that this product can have on those users for whom it works well.

Oh, definitely, definitely. I think make a huge difference. Yeah, like you said, the things you’ve never really seen, never really seen clearly, or never really got to experience or be a part of that makes a huge difference. Really, just because we are on a podcast, so there’s no real way to visually see the product, can you kind of describe the eSight Go to me?

Sure. In the most clearest terms, I would say the eSight Go looks like a pair of large sunglasses. If your listeners are familiar with sunglasses you’d get after cataract surgery that sort of go over even your existing glasses that shield you from all the sunlight, that’s sort of the aspect of it, almost like opaque safety glasses, if you will. And there’s also a battery that runs it that is horseshoe-shaped and you wear it like a little yolk around your neck. So all the weight and bulk of the battery is no longer the headset. So we’ve been able to reduce the weight of the headset by two thirds over the previous version.

So you wear it just like you would a pair of eyeglasses. The difference being is instead of looking through the glasses, you’re looking at two tiny OLED 4K television screens, one in front of each eye, and you’re watching the image of the camera on the front of the device on the bridge of your nose is picking up. So the device in essence picks up the central image the person can no longer perceive. We run that image through our software algorithm, which allows the wear to enhance the image with color filters, contrast, brightness settings, and magnification. And so depending on the situation, you dial in those settings using a remote control or controls on the top of the right temporal arm, and you, in essence, set up the optimization of the image until that blind spot disappears or at the very least it’s minimized so you can see that central image again.

And the analogy we always use is we’re sort of bypassing the defective damaged photoreceptors in the macula and using photoreceptors outside of that tissue to get that central image to the brain for processing, and the brain just processes it like any other vision and the blind spot disappears, according to our users. So they tell me when they put the device on for the first time, they go from seeing that blur in the face, not seeing any facial features. They put the device on and they can also already make out some eyebrows or maybe the lower lip, but there’s still a void in the center and they download settings and they have a complete view of the face. And lots of our users go back to activities of daily living that they thought they wouldn’t be able to do anymore. Think scrapbooking, needle point, knitting, fishing, putting a lure on a fishing line, maybe walking your dog, or something as simple as sitting in the park and just people-watching on a Sunday afternoon. So all these things become possible again with the enhancement of that central vision.

Oh, that is so cool. Roland, it’s been two years, really, since we had you on a year and a half, two years. What kind of changes and updates have come through for eSight in that time? How has it changed, I guess, since last time we had you on?

Yeah. I mean, the last time you had me on, which was in the early fall or late summer of 2024, we just commercialized this product. So we had just shipped out our first number of units to our distributors and we’re really just getting started. And so now a year and a half in, we’re very pleased with the uptake of our product in the marketplace. We’ve been very active in promoting at conferences, both for healthcare professionals in the eye care sector, as well as conferences focused on individuals with vision loss or other disabilities.

And we’ve really worked hard to get the awareness up of our product, and that has driven a lot of sales. We’ve also had the pleasure of receiving referrals from over a hundred clinics in the US and Canada, where they’ve identified patients that would be good candidates for eSight, and we’ve worked with them via telehealth to assess whether the product is good for them or not, and ultimately, hopefully, we had some people purchase the device, and as a matter of fact, I know they did. And then our coaches have been very busy with all those new patients, making sure that after the sale, they have the support they need to ensure they learn how to use the device and they optimize it and get as much out of life as they choose to.

So it’s been quite busy on that front. And then of course, the last we talked just a few months earlier, the Gentex Corporation had announced that they’re acquiring all the assets of eSight. So we are now a brand under the Gentex Corporation umbrella. So of course we spent quite a bit of time integrating our individuals and our systems into that corporate environment. Before, we were a startup with maybe 25 people or so and some contractors, and now we are fully integrated into the Gentex Corporation. So that’s been very, very good for us. It’s given us access to resources that we didn’t have access to before. And even from a procurement perspective, of course, we can leverage the scale and breadth of Gentex to help us drive costs down as well. And that was, of course, pivotal in being able to reduce the price by $2,000 versus the previous device as well. So it’s been a really good partnership, and I’m very pleased to be able to tell you that eSight is part of the Gentex Corporation.

Roland, what have you got that’s new?

Well, at CES, we’re very proud to unveil a comfort strap. So over the last year or so, we have received feedback from individuals using the eSight Go, especially those that wear for long periods of time, you know, in the workplace or at school, or if they enjoy reading books for a long period, or longer sporting events, that it’s very comfortable, but after a while you do feel it on the nose. So our engineers have devised a comfort strap, which completely takes the weight off the nose. So it is a headband that attaches to the arms of the device and literally lifts it completely off the nose. So that gives you truly long-term use without any discomfort whatsoever. So we showed that in product for the first time in our booth at CES, and we are just building inventory as we speak and should be available sometime later in Q1.

So look for that for all the eSight users that would be interested in purchasing a comfort strap. We’ll have that available, and we will certainly integrate it into our telehealth programs so people can experience the eSight Go, including the comfort strap, when they do the home experience trials.

Awesome, awesome. And really you brought this up just a little bit, but I think we should dig in a little bit more because I think this is a really cool part of eSight and what you all do, but can you dig in and tell us a little bit more about the coaching sessions that are available?

Sure. So eSight and Gentex employs a number of coaches to help users of eSight, and we have them throughout the US. They’re all users of the device, so they’re all visually impaired with a variety of pathologies. And whether you’re doing a telehealth assessment or you’ve purchased a device, you are assigned a coach, and that coach takes you from unboxing, boot-up, orientation, and talking about, “Well, what is it that you want to achieve with eSight? Do you want to watch TV and read, or do you want to go beyond that and pursue the hobbies that maybe you were unable to do without any visual aid?” And they are your first point in contact, so if you need, beyond the initial setup and training, if you need help, call your coach. If something breaks and you have a warranty claim, you can call your coach.

So you have that partnership beyond the transaction. We don’t want the users to be transactional. We want them to be part of the eSight community. And so that’s why we’re very proud of our eSight coaches being active in supporting our users beyond the transaction. And then beyond that, on a monthly basis, the coaches also put on a webinar called Vision Central, and any user that’s in our database will get an email that say, “Hey, here’s our topic, here’s the link. Come see us live.” And you can certainly ask questions and interact with our coaches on whatever topic they’re presenting. And then those videos are also uploaded onto YouTube, so if anybody is not able to see it live, they have access to all that information after the fact. So just some topics, as an example, that were done recently, using public transit using eSight. So you have the breadth and depth of the eSight coaching experience using their eSight technology and getting around airports or buses or trains, whatever they may have done, and they share their learned wisdom in those Vision Central seminars.

So it’s a wonderful community beyond the transaction with eSight. They continue to learn and improve your utilization of eSight. And of course, if there’s ever a software update, there’s new features, that would be highlighted at Vision Central as well, so people can always be in touch with the latest and greatest features and benefits that they can drive from their eSight technology.

That’s awesome. That really just kind of guarantees that they’re getting the most out of the device. Because I know for a lot of folks, oh, just having something that makes a difference, it’s like, “Oh, it’s so big, it’s so huge. It makes such a difference in my life,” and it’s like, “Oh, it can do more,” you know? There’s even more if you really dig in. So I love that they kind of have somebody walking along with them that whole time.

Roland, you probably have plenty of these too, but could you tell me a success story or maybe someone’s experience using eSight?

Yeah. I mean, there’s plenty. I’m thinking of an individual that was actually with us at CES, who’s one of our users. She has Stargardt disease, as I’d mentioned earlier, and she uses it for both her professional endeavors as well as personal. So she is a physical therapist, also teaches physical therapy. So without the eSight device, things like doing vital sign assessment, think of blood pressure, there’s no way you can see the blood pressure gauge without eSight. She uses the technology both in her workplace. When she’s teaching, she’s able to see what’s on the projector, what slide she’s presenting to the team. She can see the students in the audience. She can engage with the audience much more easily because her use of her eSight. And then on her personal side, again, she remembers seeing the freckles on her daughter’s face for the first time when her daughter was 10 or 12 years old. So those are incredible milestones that people have with their device.

And then if I can shift gears to macular degeneration, we had one of our distributors relay a story to us where one of her customers had a bucket list trip, which she also wanted to go see an African safari and see all the animals on the planes, and of course, being affected by macular degeneration, her vision was not good enough to see any of those things. But with eSight, her and her sister took their bucket list trip to a safari and was able to see all the animals she wanted to see. So there’s, again, a wonderful life experience that was made possible with eSight. And there’s lots and lots of stories like that, people going back to work, people continuing their higher education because eSight makes it much easier to interact with your environment, with the people around you, and with the tasks that you need to accomplish to fulfill your dreams.

Nice, nice. Very cool. And Roland, just because you brought up TES there, you’ve been doing this quite a while, you go to the conferences, you kind of see everything else, so I was kind of wondering if you could talk about maybe how user expectations are really evolving around eSight, but really just around AT in general, if you had any kind of insights on that.

Yeah. I mean, assist technology certainly has evolved over the last decade. So I think that the biggest expectation is that this technology gets smaller, lighter, easier to use, and integrates into your day-to-day seamlessly, and that’s as simple as the cosmetics of these devices. You know, people want to see, they don’t want to be seen and they don’t want to stand out in a crowd, so anything wearable, you want it to be a subtle aesthetic. So that’s number one. And then, of course, ease of use. As software and electronics get better and better and smaller and smaller and more powerful, more powerful, it allows these devices to deliver a value proposition like never before. And even when I think of the previous-generation eSight device, it weighed three times as much. It was much, much larger. It had less battery life, it had less field of view, it had lesser visual sharpness, image sharpness, image quality. So that, of course, is the technology getting better.

And then you have things like AI as well coming into the marketplace where right now AI is kind of the hottest topic, which we discuss quite a bit. And I think they’re complimentary technologies. I don’t think one will replace the other. When I think of some of the smart glasses that are out there, which are really a product for the mass market that have accessibility features, but if you think of CES and you walk into the exhibit hall and you do a scene description and AI will tell you while you’re in a Congress hall, “There’s multiple booze with vendors and a large crowd of people looking at various products.” If you’re completely visually impaired, that may not be as helpful as being able to see what is there and be able to identify the booth you want to go to.

So I think the eSight provides that visual enhancement and visual perception, which makes it so easy to use. That’s not to say that certain AI features wouldn’t complement us and enhance our offering. So I think the future is going to see those technologies blend together seamlessly just to create a improved and easier user experience beyond what we’re currently experiencing.

Oh, for sure, for sure. Kind of along those same lines, and you kind of touched on this a little bit, but what are some trends you think that people should watch for in 2026 as we’re kind of at the beginning of the year here?

Yeah, I think wearables is a big trend. I mean, we already see it in past market with health monitoring and performance monitoring, sleep monitoring, rings and bracelets and watches that have been the market for a number of years. Those continue to become more and more popular and finding more and more users for more and more monitoring. So I think that’s a big one. And the section that we were in at CES, which is the digital health section, there was a lot of those type of technologies which I think will allow us to monitor health and stay ahead of any potential downside of health because of that monitoring.

So I think that’s a huge trend. And wearables is a big part of that. I think wearables are becoming more and more accepted in society, and that will also and is already impacting the acceptance for wearable assistive devices. And I think that’ll continue, especially since the technology will become lighter, smaller, better, more user-friendly going forward. So I think that’s going to be a huge trend that more and more individuals, no matter what their challenges may be, are going to have wearable technology, making their interaction with the world easier, and that technology is going to facilitate that more and more in the wearable space.

And then I think there’s also some trends in not just home automation, but also being able to monitor the home environment to a greater degree, fall detection, those kind of things, where people can age in place longer because of technologies like eSight allowing them to live more independently and then some of these other technologies that are slowly coming into the household that allows communication and monitoring to be much more seamless. And so all those technologies coming together will allow individuals to stay in their homes longer despite various health challenges.

Sure, sure. Yep. And what’s wonderful is everything you said there, I just hear independence, independence, independence, which is always kind of the goal, but I love that there’s just so many more things out there and so many more different things, as you said, can kind of work together and really open up a lot of doors for folks.

Roland, before we do run out of time, I do kind of have to ask, if our listeners want to find out more about eSight and everything else, what is a good way for them to do that?

Of course, you can certainly go to our website, which is esighteyewear.com. There’s lots of information on there from just general insights into the product and how it works. If anybody is interested in reading our published clinical trials, it is also posted on there. You can download it and look at that. On that website, there’s also contact-us form, so you can reach out to us if you have any questions or would like to use a device. And there’s also a locator for our distribution network across the United States, so if you are interested in trying the device maybe in person and see if there’s a distributor near you that can help you, you can certainly identify those on the locator, either by map or by simply typing in your location, and it’ll give you the contact information for the nearest distributor to you. So you can certainly reach out to those guys as well. They’re very, very helpful, very, very knowledgeable, and would love to hear from you.

Awesome. We’ll make sure that’s down in the show notes so that folks can easily find it.

Roland, thank you so much for coming back on the show, for talking about eSight, about some of the new things, and really just for taking a little bit of time to talk about the market itself and all the different great things that might be coming down the pipeline to help make life, well, just a little bit more accessible for individuals with disabilities. So thank you so much for taking time out of your day. We always love having you on.

It’s been a pleasure. Thank you for the opportunity, and I look forward to the next time.

Do you have a question about assistive technology? Do you have a suggestion for someone we should interview on an Assistive Technology Update? If so, call our listener line at 317-721-7124. Send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org, or shoot us a note on Twitter @indataproject.

Our captions and transcripts for the show are sponsored by the Indiana Telephone Relay Access Corporation or InTRAC. You can find out more about InTRAC at relayindiana.com.

A special thanks to Nikol Prieto for scheduling our amazing guests and making a mess of my schedule. Today’s show was produced, edited, hosted, and fraught over by yours truly. The opinions expressed by our guests are their own and may or may not reflect those of the INDATA Project, Easterseals Crossroads, our supporting partners, or this host.

This was your Assistive Technology Update, and I’m Josh Anderson with the INDATA Project at Easterseals Crossroads in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana. We look forward to seeing you next time. Bye-bye.