this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2026
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[–] grue@lemmy.world 43 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (19 children)

Were it not for the fact that it's the fucking privacy-invading big tech companies doing it, I would admit that there are good use-cases for the camera:

  • Reminding you of the name and possibly previous interactions with the person you're talking to, for instance (if it only did local lookup based on consensual photos you had previously added to your address book). I'm not face-blind or anything, but my memory is bad enough that that would be helpful to me.
  • Scanning, OCR-ing and making searchable any papers you're looking at (hooking to your selfhosted Paperless-NGX).
  • Displaying augmented-reality translations of street signs (which is one of the few reasonable things Google Glass actually did).
[–] MrMcGasion@lemmy.world 9 points 1 month ago (5 children)

I've heard they can be also quite useful for blind/vision-impaired users to describe surroundings and read signs, etc.

[–] FinishingDutch@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Yep. That’s the sort of thing that interested me as a visually impaired guy (I see about 20 percent with my contacts). It’s a shame I can’t really buy and use them for that since I’d likely get physically assaulted for using them for benign purposes.

[–] Bgugi@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Check your local laws, but you can probably buy and carry a white cane so long as you aren't trying to scam the legal benefits of it.

[–] FinishingDutch@lemmy.world 2 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Everyone can, there’s no legal issues with it. Same as wheelchairs. You can buy and use one if you like. Of course, people will be weirded out if you do it, but there’s absolutely nothing illegal about it.

That said, I’ve never needed a cane even though I’ve been trained to use a ‘recognition cane’ to cross the street (I went to a school for the visually impaired, where they teach everyone how to do that).

[–] Bgugi@lemmy.world 2 points 4 weeks ago

Didn't want to state a blanket "can" - these types of laws vary in a lot of places.

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