Five months after Meta pledged free Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses to every blind veteran in America, demand has outrun the program: the Blinded Veterans Association now puts all new requests on a waitlist.
Meta announced the donation on June 12 with the association, saying more than 130,000 American veterans are legally blind and will be eligible. The glasses read documents aloud, identify objects and describe surroundings on voice command. Meta is donating the glasses as assistive technology, not just as a consumer gadget.
Mike Rowe, the host of “Dirty Jobs,” put the program back in front of an audience Tuesday evening, the night before Veterans Day. “This is not an ad for @Meta. Facebook didn’t pay me to share this. But I’m sharing it anyway, because I think it matters,” he wrote on X.
In the 92-second video attached to the post, Rowe said his grandfather, Carl Noble, who inspired “Dirty Jobs” and the mikeroweWORKS Foundation, spent the last ten years of his life legally blind. “These would have completely transformed his last decade on earth,” Rowe said. He said he knows three legally blind veterans personally, and he called the donation “freaking awesome.”
Rowe played the Meta commercial at the center of the program. In it, Don Overton, a U.S. Army veteran of the 82nd Airborne Division, says: “When I lost my eyesight in Desert Storm from a bunker explosion, I also lost my independence. The moment I put on my Ray-Ban Meta glasses, I got my independence back.” The ad shows him giving voice commands. “Hey Meta, read this letter,” he says, and the assistant begins reading it aloud. He asks where the blue shirt is and is told, “That’s the one.” He asks where the flag is and hears, “It’s just to the right of you.” Overton says the glasses let him “go out to dinner with my wife and have a normal date night.”
Overton worked with Meta’s wearables team on features for veterans, Dina Powell McCormick, Meta’s president and vice chairman, said in the announcement. That work, she said, led Meta to conclude “we had to find a way to reach every blind veteran in America.” Andrew Bosworth, Meta’s chief technology officer, called giving veterans technology that can “meaningfully navigate the world around them” a “profound honor.”
Veterans request glasses through the association, which is giving a free pair to its blind and low-vision members. Membership is free, and the glasses go to established members. Veteran nonprofits can apply through TechSoup, which says each recipient organization receives complete kits with the glasses, a charging case and getting-started materials. The standard application allows requests of up to 100 devices. The program is capped at 130,000 pairs of first-generation Ray-Ban Meta glasses, and TechSoup says donated devices cannot be resold or used commercially.
Every pair comes with training. The association hosts monthly webinars with TechSoup, Meta and partner organizations hold in-person events, and the association has written a guide that covers voice commands, reading documents, answering phone calls and getting around. Organizations that distribute the glasses must first complete a train-the-trainer course the association created. Partners include Tunnel to Towers, Homes for Our Troops, Lighthouse Guild, the American Council of the Blind, National Industries for the Blind and Oscar Mike.
Thomas Panek, president and chief executive of Lighthouse Guild, is blind. Aside from his white cane and guide dog, he said in the announcement, he never leaves home without his Meta glasses. They are “not only the most useful technology ever developed for the blind,” he said, “they look pretty cool too.”
The association said it is a small team working through every application, and it will share more about distribution later. Veterans who cannot attend an in-person event will get their glasses in the mail.
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