When Jeff Regan was born, the nerves leading from his brain to his eyes didn’t work right. Because of that, the world has looked like a blur to him for most of his life. But fours years ago, everything changed. He put on a large, clumsy headset. He wasn’t playing a character in Star Trek—though he may have looked like it. He was wearing a pair of glasses for the blind.

Suddenly, Mr. Regan could read a newspaper while eating breakfast. He could see the faces of his coworkers from across the room. He could go to plays and watch what was happening onstage. Before, he had to guess why the other audience members were laughing. “These glasses have made my life so much better,” says Mr. Regan.

Mr. Regan isn’t completely blind. But his eyesight is so bad that lenses in regular glasses don’t help him at all. His new glasses are made by a company called eSight. The eSight glasses send images from a forward-facing camera to two small screens inside the headset—one for each eye. The screens beam the images into the wearer’s peripheral vision. (Peripheral vision shows what’s to the left and right of your central vision, which looks straight ahead.) Many nearly blind people’s central vision has worn down. But their peripheral vision still works well.

The latest version of eSight magnifies the video feed up to 24 times. A hand control adjusts brightness and contrast (difference in color tones). eSight officials believe 200 million people around the world could benefit from the glasses. But insurance companies don’t help pay for the cost. The price tag on the device might make your eyes pop. It costs $10,000! That’s a lot for people who have trouble getting high-paying jobs because they can’t see.