The Mother or at Least the Child of All Magnification Solutions

Built-in accessibility features and magnification apps offer visually impaired people new ways to enlarge words and images.

The Eyesight and VisionAssist apps provide iOS users with a mobile magnifier for a few dollars -- hundreds and sometimes thousands less than desktop video magnifiers cost. Even pocket models such as Enhanced Vision's Amigo costs $1,695.

Dedicated devices such as the Optelec Compact 5 HD do still boast the highest quality optics and resolution of any product.
In-between solutions include the $199 Eazy Reader, which provides a small camera and cable for turning one's TV into a CCTV.

All of these solutions, and the evolution of Apple TV, may be converging to provide the ultimate magnification solution: using AirPlay to display iOS content on a large HDTV monitor.

AppleTV is a little fat cube you hook up between your iOS device and HDTV. It comes with a small remote.

With AirPlay, you can project photos, videos, web pages, and applications on the big screen and are still able to use accessibility features, including VoiceOver and Zoom. Screen clarity remains intact, even on a 50-inch monitor.

This is not a magnification setup any vocational rehabilitation is likely to approve. It's more of a felicitous conjunction of technologies that many visually impaired people will have access to in the coming months and years.