In the summer of 2023, “Creative Well-being Tokyo Summer Session 2023” was held at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, gathering experts and artists involved in accessibility. This event, under the theme “Accessibility and co-creation: Aiming for a symbiotic society through arts and culture,” featured talk sessions, exhibitions, workshops, and performances over the course of about a week. One of the exhibits featured works using laser retinal projection technology. Among the displays in this booth was a photo exhibition titled “Seeing for the first time.” The exhibit featured photos of high school students holding cameras, taken by photographer Masanori Ikeda, as well as everyday landscape photos taken by the high school students themselves.

Initially, the company was developing a glasses-type product similar to “smart glasses.” At an exhibition where they displayed the product, someone with low vision–a condition where visual impairment causes some difficulties in daily life–said,  “I can see when I use this.” This feedback inspired the company to create products specifically for people with visual impairments (*2).
In refining the product, the glasses required adjustments for field of view and fitting, which limited their versatility. Therefore, the company increased the screen size and transformed it into a handheld device rather than a wearable one, resulting in the RETISSA ON HAND. Although it looks like a microscope, looking through the lens projects the image directly onto the retina, enabling users to see regardless of their vision or field of view. This device’s unique feature includes the ability to magnify small text or distant objects.
“The eye adjusts focus by refracting light through the lens, projecting images onto the retina. In contrast, laser retinal projection technology passes a weak laser beam straight through the center of the pupil without using the eye’s focus adjustment, projecting directly onto the retina. This scanning technique creates an afterimage that appears as a visual image. It works similarly to a cathode-ray tube (CRT) television.”

This technology was developed into the product as the retinal projection viewfinder RETISSA NEOVIEWER and was integrated with Sony’s digital camera, resulting in the DSC-HX99 RNV kit, the camera kit used by the high school students mentioned earlier.
“While we were getting help from people with low vision to test the camera kit, we heard comments like, ‘Actually, there aren’t many things I struggle with.’ They mentioned, ‘For us, a world that’s hard to see is normal.’ This made us realize that simply making the world easier to see wasn’t enough; we need to add positive value,” Mr. Miyauchi explains.
Feedback from customers who purchased the camera kit included comments such as, “I bought this camera and went to the zoo with my children to take pictures,” and “Having this camera has made taking walks more enjoyable.” Mr. Miyauchi adds, “The added value of the experience of taking pictures may also be creating enjoyment in going out.” Additionally, after donating a prototype of the camera kit to a school for the blind, a photography club was established.