A Tremendous Glimpse
of the Obvious

Its been over two decades since Oxford professor Josh Silver came up with an idea that would change the course of his life as well as tens of thousands of other people across the globe. A casual conversation with a friend gave him a “tremendous glimpse of the obvious”, and produced the idea for a deceptively simple solution to a worldwide problem: a set of eyeglasses that can be adjusted to an individual’s specific need without requiring an optician or expensive equipment. Furthermore, if the manufacturing costs can be brought low enough, the glasses may be inexpensive enough to supply some of the poorest people in the world with corrective lenses- and the opportunities and health benefits that follow.

Twenty-six years later and the AdSpecs are just starting to get widespread usage. Given that eyesight deficiencies may affect up to half of the planet’s population, there may be billions of individuals who will benefit from this invention.

How does it work? Simple – each lens is actually a set of two lenses sandwiching a transparent membrane filled with silicone gel. Adjusting the amount of silicone between the two outer lens elements changes the power of the lens set. With minimal instruction, an individual can tune the lens to correct their own vision- simply by looking at an eye chart and adding more or less silicone until the chart looks the clearest. Once optimized, the small syringes of silicone are removed and a screw locks the adjustment in place.

The global impact of poor eyesight is substantial. Without corrective lenses, individuals may have difficulty reading, working, and providing for their families. In many developing areas of the world, an otherwise healthy and productive craftsman may be forced to retire because he just can’t see what he’s working on anymore. A pair of glasses can be enough to change someone’s life. However, in many places this solution is too expensive. Taking the optician and traditional eyeglass manufacturing equipment out of the equation removes substantial cost barriers that developing communities face in this area.

The eyeglasses are currently selling for $25 a pair, which is inexpensive by first world standards, but still quite costly to have a real effect in the third world. Silver hopes to drop the unit cost below $2 by streamlining the design and manufacturing processes. Approximately 40,000 pairs are currently in use in 20 countries worldwide, but Silver has high hopes for annual volumes of 100 million or more.

Silver’s organization, The Center for Vision in the Developing World, has teamed up with the World Bank and Dow Corning Corporation to scale the project’s manufacturing and distribution. With billions of people in need, they’ve got their work cut out for them.

Visit The Center for Vision in the Developing World, and watch Josh Silver’s TED presentation from 2009: