Al Carr took small steps from his Lexington home’s back door, swaying a walking cane back and forth in front of him.
The Meta Ray-Ban AI glasses he wore were doing a lot of work for him. A camera built into the frame transmitted his forward view to a remote volunteer, who assumed Carr’s view via monitor and told him which direction to step next.
As his wife, Gail, watched from a short distance away, Carr made it to the foot of his driveway and back.
“He had not left this house except with someone in eight and a half years, so this was a really big thing,” Gail Carr said, recalling that first walk in late July. “Because what he’s missed most is being able to get out and walk, and this is kind of a starting thing, and can, you know, branch out from that. But that was a biggie.”
Al Carr, sitting next to her on their living room couch, added, “It is a real life-changer.”
The Marine Corps veteran, Virginia Military Institute graduate and retired Washington and Lee University law professor received the glasses for free. It’s part of a Meta program with the national Blinded Veterans Association that has pledged a free pair to more than 130,000 American veterans who are legally blind, according to Meta.
The company shipped about 100 pairs to the Yorktown-based Cadet Foundation, which in an open letter to “the VMI Family,” wrote that it will help determine eligibility and deliver the glasses with a brief and simple training in a program that is not limited to VMI alumni only.
“Any blind or vision-impaired veteran may qualify — including VMI alumni, and the veterans among the families and friends of our VMI family,” according to the foundation letter.
‘Meta, be my eyes’
Al Carr, 83, retired in about 2010 as a lawyer in the energy regulation field, and was teaching at his law school alma mater when he lost the sight in his left eye. He had already been blind in the right eye for decades.
He kept teaching until 2018. His friends would read to him, to help refresh his memory before a lecture. His wife read to him plenty, as well.
“Gail learned a lot more about nuclear power than she ever wanted to know,” he said.
She replied: “The knowledge was all in his head. He just had to jog what was there.”
He would later switch to a service called Aira, which connects people with blindness to visual interpreters. Al Carr said the Meta glasses are a vast improvement. Aira provided “much bulkier” headgear, and its available information was less inclusive than Meta’s, Al Carr said. (Aira in March announced that it is partnering with Meta glasses.)
He can ask the glasses for information that intrigues him as Gail Carr reads to him, and the system responds quickly with its search function. The glasses work with his phone, so he no longer has to grope around to find it when the phone rings. All of his communications come through the eyeglass frames, read aloud by AI.
“There’s a microphone on, and you just tell it what to do, and it does it for you,” he said.
Most importantly, the glasses are helping him toward a form of independence he thought he would not have again.
“He was 75 when he went blind,” Gail Carr said. “Your brain is already set for you to do things certain ways. … Well, all of a sudden you’re not doing that. The brain has got to reset itself almost, and it can’t when you get to that age.”
One of his favorite daily activities was taking walks around Lexington, and he said he has missed that terribly. He’s working his way toward it with a sentence: “Meta, be my eyes.”
During a recent warm afternoon, connectivity was an issue. He had to keep calling for his eyes — one of a team of remote volunteers stationed nationwide for a service that’s always on-call — and within a few steps, the contact would drop. He made it a few yards down his driveway before giving up.
He and Gail Carr said that the system has worked better in the days since.
The nonprofit Cadet Foundation is distributing about 100 pairs that it has on hand, with training and permanent free access to the service, with 500 more available as the foundation needs them, said foundation President Bob Morris.
The Virginia Department for the Blind and Vision Impaired has identified 37 veterans who would qualify, Morris said. The Cadet Foundation planned to provide glasses immediately to the department’s staff, which will give them to the vets, along with training.
Also involved is The Cadet newspaper. The foundation and the newspaper, both independent of VMI, are run by VMI cadets, alumni and volunteers, Morris said. The newspaper restarted in 2021, with help from the foundation, after the school-sanctioned version shut down in 2016. Staff members from the paper, with other alumni and non-alum volunteers, are finding veterans, verifying their eligibility, delivering the glasses and training their wearers.
Morris and the university have been at odds in recent years. Morris sued the university in 2022, alleging that the school had violated procurement policy when it considered firms to provide diversity training on campus. His consulting firm had applied for the contract but did not make it to the final consideration round.
A judge dismissed the lawsuit in 2024 but ordered VMI to pay more than $15,000 in legal fees that Morris’ company had incurred.
Morris, in an email exchange, said “any personal matter” involving himself and VMI is a separate matter. This project, he said, is about “putting Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses, which read mail aloud, describe a person’s surroundings, and connect the wearer to live assistance, into the hands of blind and vision-impaired veterans, at no cost to the veteran.”
Al Carr said he has used his pair successfully for all of that. He has even had the chance to take a walk on the VMI campus this month. He walked the parade ground and back before the midday sun got the eyepiece too hot.
“I needed to shut it down and let it cool off for a while, which I did, and it’s worked fine since then,” he said.
They even provide the occasional bit of found humor when the microphone is on. Al Carr at one point in a recent conversation said the word “Meta,” then found himself forced to interrupt his conversational flow.
“Whoops! I’m sorry,” he told his glasses. “I didn’t mean to bother you, Meta.”
For more information on the program or to apply, call 757-869-6770 or email info@thecadetfoundation.org.
