Smart Glasses as a Tool for Inclusive Education, Another Side Of The Conversation Schools Cannot Ignore
- The White Hatter
- 1 day ago
- 14 min read
We have written several articles about the privacy, safety, consent, and educational challenges surrounding smart glasses (1)(2)(3). As these devices become less expensive and begin to look almost indistinguishable from ordinary eyewear, we believe schools need to be paying attention. A student being able to discreetly photograph or record a teacher, another student, a test, a computer screen, or a private conversation creates legitimate concerns that schools should be discussing now, rather than waiting until something happens and then attempting to develop policy in response.
However, there is another side to this conversation that we believe is equally important, particularly as schools begin considering policies that regulate or prohibit smart glasses on school property. The very same technology that can create a privacy concern for one student can provide meaningful accessibility for another. For some students who are blind or visually impaired, a camera mounted in a pair of glasses isn’t necessarily there to record classmates or capture content for social media. It may be there to read a worksheet, identify an object, describe what is happening in front of them, help them locate something in a classroom, or provide information about an environment they cannot otherwise visually access.
This is why we believe smart glasses provide an excellent example of the complexity schools increasingly face when developing technology policies. It’s easy to look at a pair of camera equipped glasses and see a recording device, however, it becomes more complicated when that same camera is functioning as the eyes of an artificial intelligence system that is helping a visually impaired student understand the world around them. Sometimes the feature that creates the risk is also the feature creating the accessibility.
Assistive technology for people who are blind or have low vision isn’t new. Magnifiers, braille displays, screen readers, electronic magnification systems, white canes, guide dogs, specialized optical devices, orientation and mobility training, and human assistance have helped people navigate educational environments for decades. These tools remain extremely important, and smart glasses should not be viewed as replacing them. What is changing is the amount of assistive technology that can now be incorporated into something that looks remarkably similar to an ordinary pair of glasses.
Today’s smart glasses can combine cameras, microphones, speakers, optical character recognition, computer vision, artificial intelligence, voice interaction, and internet connectivity. Depending upon the device, the camera can capture what the wearer is looking toward, artificial intelligence can attempt to interpret that information, and the glasses can communicate the result back to the wearer through audio. Rather than requiring a student to hold a phone or separate camera over an object, they may simply be able to look toward it and ask the technology a question.
There are several ways smart eyewear is already being used by people with low vision, including magnification, optical character recognition, text-to-speech, object and scene recognition, and connections with remote visual interpreters who can describe something the wearer cannot see. What is particularly interesting is that these capabilities are no longer limited to highly specialized medical or assistive devices. Some functions are beginning to appear in consumer smart glasses powered by increasingly sophisticated multimodal artificial intelligence such as the Meta Glasses.
This creates an important consideration for educators and school administrators. Assistive technology may no longer look like assistive technology. A device that appears to be a pair of ordinary glasses may actually be providing a student with access to information that their classmates obtain simply by opening their eyes.
Imagine a teacher handing students a worksheet and asking the class to begin reading. For most students, this is an unremarkable educational moment. They look down, read the instructions, and begin the assignment. For a student with significant visual impairment, that same piece of paper can create an accessibility barrier. The material may need to be enlarged, converted into braille, made available digitally for a screen reader, read aloud by another person, or accessed through another accommodation.
Some smart glasses can use optical character recognition to capture printed text and convert it into speech. Instead of requiring the student to transfer the document to another device or wait for someone else to assist them, the student may be able to look toward the page and have the text read through the glasses. The educational significance isn’t simply that technology makes reading more convenient. In some circumstances, the technology can provide more immediate and independent access to the same material being provided to everyone else in the classroom.
There is emerging research supporting this potential. A 2025 multi centre study published in the Indian Journal of Ophthalmology examined an artificial intelligence powered spectacle mounted assistive device involving 90 participating, between six and 56 years of age, in which approximately 64 percent of the participants were students (4). Researchers examined four primary functions of the technology which were reading, identifying things around the wearer, walking assistance, and face recognition.
Reading emerged as the most positively received feature after a month of use, with approximately 73 percent of participants reporting a positive experience. Researchers noted that participants were able to access printed and educational material, including books, brochures, and handwritten classroom notes, and that students used the technology to assist with their academic needs. This is important because it moves the discussion beyond what smart glasses might theoretically be capable of doing someday. We are beginning to see evidence of how this type of technology can actually be incorporated into the everyday lives and educational experiences of people with significant visual impairment.
It is also important to remember that learning isn’t limited to what appears on a worksheet. Classrooms are incredibly visual environments. Teachers write on whiteboards and project information onto screens. Students move between desks and learning stations. Science teachers demonstrate experiments at the front of a room. Maps, photographs, graphs, diagrams, posters, and signs communicate information. Students need to locate supplies, recognize people, identify objects, find classrooms, navigate hallways, participate in field trips, and understand what is happening around them.
For a sighted student, much of this information is absorbed almost automatically. A quick glance can tell them that the teacher has moved to the other side of the classroom, that three students are standing near the door, that an empty chair is available across the room, or that the object being discussed by the teacher is sitting on the front table. A student with significant vision loss may not have access to that same incidental visual information.
This is where smart glasses and artificial intelligence can become particularly interesting. The 2025 study included a “Things Around You” function that attempted to identify objects in the wearer’s environment, including desks, doors, laptops, and other everyday objects. Approximately 45 percent of participants reported finding this feature useful. Although that result also tells us that the technology isn’t equally useful for everyone, it demonstrates the possibility of converting visual information into auditory information that a visually impaired student can access.
Imagine a student being able to ask, “What’s in front of me?” and hearing that there is a desk several feet ahead. Imagine being able to ask what objects are sitting on a laboratory table, whether there is an empty chair nearby, what is written on a classroom sign, or what the teacher is holding during a demonstration. None of these capabilities suddenly gives a person sight, and we need to be careful not to describe the technology that way. What it can potentially provide is additional information about the environment that would otherwise have to come from another person, another assistive device, or not be available at all.
One of the things that stood out to us when reviewing the research and experiences surrounding smart glasses wasn’t simply what the technology can recognize. It was what the person using the technology may no longer have to ask someone else to recognize for them.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with a student receiving assistance. Educational assistants, teachers of the visually impaired, orientation and mobility specialists, classroom teachers, peers, and other supports can play an enormously important role in helping students succeed. However, there is an important difference between having assistance available when it is needed and being unnecessarily dependent upon another person for information that technology could allow a student to obtain independently.
Consider how many times during a school day a visually impaired student might otherwise have to ask someone, “What does this say?”, “Who’s standing over there?”, “What’s on the desk?”, “Which classroom is this?”, “What is the teacher holding?”, or “Can you read this for me?” Each individual request may seem small, but collectively they can create a significant degree of dependence upon the people around them.
If smart glasses can answer even some of these questions, the benefit isn’t simply technological convenience. It can provide the student with greater agency over when they ask for assistance and when they choose to do something themselves. The 2025 study concluded that AI powered smart vision glasses showed promise as a relatively affordable and non invasive assistive technology capable of helping people with severe visual impairment address everyday challenges and increase self-reliance. That concept of self reliance should matter enormously when we talk about inclusive education.
There is another part of this conversation that can easily be overlooked when we focus exclusively on the technical capabilities of assistive devices. Young people generally want to participate alongside their peers without constantly feeling as though they are being singled out because of a disability.
Some traditional accessibility technologies are highly visible. There is nothing inherently wrong with this, and we certainly shouldn’t teach young people that assistive technology is something to be embarrassed about. However, we also need to acknowledge the reality that children and teens can be extremely conscious of anything that makes them feel different from their peers. A student may therefore be more comfortable using a technology that integrates naturally into something they would already wear.
As smart glasses become smaller, lighter, and increasingly similar in appearance to conventional eyewear, they may allow some students to access assistance without repeatedly interrupting a lesson, pulling out another device, or drawing attention to themselves. New England Low Vision and Blindness argues that smart glasses can support more inclusive teaching through functions such as text-to-speech, magnification, personalized visual assistance, and other adaptive features that allow visually impaired students to participate more fully alongside their classmates (5).
This won’t be true for every student. Accessibility should never become a technological one size fits all solution. Some students will prefer braille. Others will prefer a screen reader, electronic magnifier, human assistance, or another established accessibility technology. Some may find smart glasses uncomfortable or distracting. The important point isn’t that visually impaired students should be given smart glasses. It is that smart glasses may become another legitimate accessibility option that should be considered based upon the needs and preferences of the individual student.
The addition of multimodal artificial intelligence significantly expands this conversation. Earlier generations of assistive technology were often designed to perform a specific task. A magnifier enlarged something, optical character recognition converted printed text into machine-readable text, or a screen reader converted that text into speech. Modern AI systems increasingly attempt to understand the broader context of what a camera is seeing.
This means a student may eventually be able to interact with their environment conversationally. Instead of simply asking the glasses to read text, they might ask, “Describe the diagram in front of me,” “What is the teacher holding?”, “Which container has the red label?”, “Is there an empty chair near me?”, “What objects are on this table?”, or “Describe this picture.”
CBC has reported on people with vision loss using AI enabled smart glasses to help interpret their surroundings and regain some independence in everyday life (6). Their anecdotal experiences illustrate something particularly important about this technology, that being artificial intelligence isn’t simply providing another interface for accessing information. In some circumstances, it can function as a form of visual interpreter, taking information captured by a camera and translating it into language the wearer can hear and understand.
For students, this could have significant implications. A graph, photograph, classroom demonstration, bulletin board, textbook illustration, or unfamiliar environment may become more accessible when the student can ask questions about what is in front of them. However, this possibility also brings us to one of the most important cautions surrounding the technology.
Smart glasses should never be presented as infallible simply because they are being used as assistive technology. Artificial intelligence can misunderstand an image, misread text, incorrectly identify an object, provide incomplete information, or hallucinate something that isn’t actually there.
All About Vision highlighted an excellent example involving a visually impaired technology user who asked smart glasses to identify a damaged door number (7). Sometimes the artificial intelligence correctly acknowledged that it couldn’t determine the number. At other times, it provided a number anyway, even though the available visual information wasn’t sufficient to support the answer, and that should get the attention of educators.
If AI incorrectly reads a sentence from a worksheet, the consequence may be relatively minor and easily corrected. If it misidentifies a chemical during a science experiment, incorrectly describes a stairway, mistakes an obstacle for an open pathway, or confidently provides inaccurate navigational information, the consequences could be much more significant.
This is why accessibility technology and AI literacy need to develop together. A student using AI powered smart glasses needs to understand that the information being provided is an interpretation generated by a machine, not guaranteed reality. They need to learn when the information can reasonably be relied upon, when it should be verified, and when the potential consequences of an incorrect answer mean another source should be consulted.
In fact, visually impaired students using this technology may need particularly sophisticated AI literacy because they may not always have the ability to visually verify what the artificial intelligence is telling them. The goal should be independence, but independence shouldn’t require unquestioning trust in the technology providing it.
Navigation is another area where smart glasses have significant potential, but it also demonstrates why enthusiasm needs to be balanced with evidence.
The 2025 Indian Journal of Ophthalmology study mentioned earlier included walking assistance designed to provide audio guidance that could complement tactile information from a white cane. However, walking assistance was the least positively rated of the four major functions examined. Only approximately 22 percent of participants reported a positive experience, and it was also the function participants most frequently identified as needing improvement.
This is an important finding. It reminds us that emerging technology doesn’t automatically become a replacement for proven accessibility tools simply because artificial intelligence has been added to it. Smart glasses should not automatically replace a white cane, guide dog, orientation and mobility training, or human assistance when these supports are necessary.
Instead, we believe it is more useful to think about smart glasses as potentially providing another layer of information. The cane may identify the physical obstacle, while smart glasses may potentially identify what that obstacle is. Orientation and mobility skills may help the student understand how to safely navigate an environment, while AI may provide additional contextual information about what is around them. Technology can complement established skills without replacing them. However, none of these accessibility benefits eliminate the legitimate privacy concerns surrounding smart glasses that we spoke to in our other articles.
The technology works because a camera is looking outward into the environment. In a school, that environment contains other students, teachers, computer screens, student work, conversations, personal information, classroom displays, examinations, and potentially sensitive situations. Depending upon the device and service being used, information captured through the glasses may be processed locally, transmitted to cloud based artificial intelligence systems, temporarily stored, retained, or processed by third parties.
Those are legitimate questions for schools to investigate. However, recognizing those privacy concerns shouldn’t automatically lead us to the conclusion that any device containing a camera should therefore be prohibited. The better question is, “How do we manage the privacy risks while preserving legitimate accessibility uses?”
That question requires more work than simply writing “no camera-equipped glasses” into a school policy, but it also produces a much more thoughtful and equitable result.
Schools have legitimate reasons for regulating recording technology. Students and educators deserve reasonable expectations of privacy, and nobody should have to enter a classroom assuming that every conversation might be secretly recorded.
However, a policy developed entirely through the lens of misconduct can create unintended consequences when the same technology is being used for accessibility.
The camera that creates a privacy concern may also be what allows a student to read a worksheet. The microphone that could theoretically record a conversation may also allow the student to communicate with the accessibility system through voice commands. The speakers that could be used for entertainment may be providing text-to-speech. The artificial intelligence that creates academic integrity concerns may be describing a classroom to a student who cannot see it. The hardware can be identical while the purpose and function are completely different.
This is why we believe schools need to be very careful about policies that regulate technology solely according to what a device is, rather than also considering what the device is being used to do.
Recognizing legitimate accessibility needs also doesn’t mean that every function of a smart glasses device must automatically be permitted everywhere and at all times. There is plenty of room between unrestricted use and outright prohibition.
Schools can work collaboratively with the student, parents or caregivers, teachers of the visually impaired, accessibility specialists, classroom educators, administrators, and privacy professionals to determine which functions are actually necessary for that student’s accommodation and how those functions can be used responsibly.
Questions could include whether continuous video recording is necessary, whether captured images are stored, where information is processed, whether facial recognition is enabled, what happens during examinations, whether the glasses should be restricted in particularly sensitive environments, how other students’ privacy is protected, and what alternative accommodation is available when the glasses cannot appropriately be used. That is what informed technology policy should look like. It recognizes that rights and interests can sometimes collide and then attempts to manage those competing interests rather than pretending one of them doesn’t exist.
Smart glasses illustrate something we believe schools are going to encounter increasingly as artificial intelligence becomes embedded into everyday technology. Devices are becoming extraordinarily difficult to categorize. A single pair of glasses can simultaneously be a camera, microphone, communication device, artificial intelligence interface, navigation system, recording device, reading assistant, magnifier, object-recognition system, and accessibility tool.
Trying to place a device into a simple category of “allowed” or “prohibited” doesn’t capture what the technology actually does. Instead of asking only, “Are smart glasses allowed in our school?”, perhaps we also need to ask, “What is this student using them for?”
That second question changes the conversation. A student wearing camera glasses to secretly record classmates or school staff isn’t necessarily equivalent to a visually impaired student using the same type of hardware to have printed material read aloud. Treating those two circumstances as though they are identical may make policy easier to write, but it doesn’t necessarily make the policy fair, effective, or educationally sound.
As parents, caregivers, educators, and those responsible for developing school policy, we believe this is the nuance that needs to remain at the centre of the smart glasses conversation when it comes to policy development.
Yes, smart glasses create legitimate privacy, safety, consent, academic integrity, and misuse concerns. We should not minimize those issues, and schools should be developing policies and educational expectations before these devices become commonplace. However, we shouldn’t allow legitimate concerns about misuse to cause us to overlook legitimate uses.
For some students who are blind or visually impaired, smart glasses may provide something far more meaningful than another piece of technology. They may allow a student to independently read the worksheet sitting in front of them, understand what is happening during a classroom demonstration, identify an object on their desk, locate something in an unfamiliar environment, or obtain information without repeatedly having to ask another person for help.
The research is still developing, the technology remains imperfect, artificial intelligence can make mistakes, privacy questions need to be addressed, and affordability and equitable access remain concerns. Smart glasses aren’t appropriate for every visually impaired student, nor should they replace established accessibility supports simply because AI is new and exciting.
However, there is enough evidence emerging to recognize that these devices can have legitimate and potentially meaningful accessibility benefits. The challenge for schools therefore shouldn’t simply be deciding whether smart glasses belong in the classroom, the challenge should be learning how to distinguish misuse from meaningful use, while protecting privacy, safety, consent, and accessibility at the same time.
There are legitimate accessibility and accommodation considerations that schools will need to address carefully. Wearable AI and camera technology has enormous potential to assist people with visual impairments, communication challenges, learning differences, and other disabilities. A policy that simply states “no smart glasses” without considering legitimate accessibility use could create problems of its own. This is another reason why thoughtful policy development is preferable to a reactive prohibition.
Sometimes the camera on a student’s face isn’t there so they can secretly record what is happening around them. Sometimes it’s there so they can better understand a world the rest of us can already see.
There is an important distinction between using technology to remove disability related barriers and normalizing a world where millions of consumers are encouraged to wear cameras on their faces as part of everyday life. In an accessibility context, the technology is being used for a specific and legitimate purpose, helping an individual participate more fully, independently, and equitably in environments that might otherwise present barriers. That is very different from the widespread consumer adoption of wearable cameras where recording, photographing, livestreaming, or AI assisted observation can become an almost invisible part of everyday interactions. The technology may look the same, but the purpose, context, necessity, and potential impact on the privacy and consent of others can be very different. Good policy needs to recognize that distinction rather than treating every person wearing smart glasses, and every use of those glasses, as though they present the same concern.
Digital Food For Thought
The White Hatter
Facts Not Fear, Facts Not Emotions, Enlighten Not Frighten, Know Tech Not No Tech
References:
