CHENNAI: The next time your father asks you to stop staring at your mobile phone’s display lest you end up wearing spectacles so large they would make your current pair look like contact lenses, you can have yourself a quiet laugh. That's right! For once, your far-sightedness (or presbyopia, if you prefer it) can actually be cured by staring hard at a smartphone application, according to the makers’ claims. With Chennaiites in their early thirties increasingly struggling with eyesight problems, finding it difficult to read fine print, letters on a computer screen or even messages on their mobile, this app might just be the perfect answer for them to ‘kick the glasses’. Developed by Ucansi, the rather bluntly titled app, GlassesOff, promises just that for its users, which is to be officially launched by Apple products in January 2012. The program is expected to be made available for other platforms as well as even for normal PCs and televisions. The test results released by the maker claim that over 70 per cent of the users were able to reduce their eyes' age by about 7 years after following the electronic course, while 40 percent managed to make their eyes a decade younger. Though ‘reading glasses’ are considered to be a curse of the forty-plus age group, plenty of techies and gamers who have presbyopia are excited about the app. “People like me game in dark rooms for about 15 hours a day or more. I have always been told that I had to wear reading glasses at 16, because of the amount of time I keep staring at monitors. Now, if only I can kick these glasses by staring for some more time at a screen, that will shut everyone up,” says an eager Abhishek K, a city-based gamer. However, with a power of +2.25, it might be a sight difficult to lose the specs, reducing their thickness though might be an option. A similar sentiment is echoed by software professionals David S and Amar Deepak, who were both told that their eyesight had worsened because of their time before the computer.According to the test results, the most significant changes were observed in three age groups 44-49, 50-54 and 55 and above, but it has been shown that the improvement takes longer if the person is older. “More than getting the glasses off my face, if I can read for longer periods, that will bring me greater joy,” says Shanta, a retired school-teacher. Well, luckily for her 90 percent of the people who underwent the test have certified that this problem was quelled by GlassesOff. “Getting someone above 50 to actually look at a phone for 15 minutes thrice a week for a few months will be quite a challenge,” explains homemaker Sunitha Chandrasekar, who complains that she will probably “go blind” before she got the hang of how to use “all these fancy phone programs”.With a sharp spike in the usage of mobile phones in Chennai, perhaps all it will take is a little ‘application’ to get middle-aged people to see clearly. Priced at 60 pounds (UK) for the first three month course, it might just be worth it considering the price spectacle frames and lens cost these days.
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