In an interview with El País, entrepreneur Max Hodak describes how new vision-restoring technology is enabling “patients [to] go from being almost blind to being able to read every letter on an eye chart and do crossword puzzles.” The report details how these patients, previously living with severe visual impairment, are now regaining the ability to perform everyday tasks that demand fine visual acuity, such as reading eye charts and completing crossword puzzles, thanks to the advances Hodak is championing.
The Promise Behind Max Hodak’s Vision-Restoring Claims
Max Hodak frames the impact of his company’s work in starkly human terms, telling El País that “patients go from being almost blind to being able to read every letter on an eye chart and do crossword puzzles.” In that description, he compresses the full arc of treatment into a single, vivid before-and-after, using the phrase “almost blind” to signal how limited these patients’ lives were before intervention and pairing it with the precise benchmark of reading “every letter on an eye chart” to convey the scale of the change. By choosing such specific language, he invites readers to picture not just marginal gains but a wholesale shift in what patients can see and do.
Hodak also highlights the ability to “do crossword puzzles” as a concrete example of restored functional vision, a detail that the interview presents as more than a colorful aside. In the El País interview with Max Hodak, that phrase sits alongside the eye chart reference to underscore that the technology is not only improving clinical test scores but also enabling patients to engage again with everyday tasks that require sustained focus and fine-detail perception. For patients, families, and clinicians, the promise Hodak outlines is that vision-restoring interventions are moving from abstract research goals to outcomes that can be measured in letters read and puzzles solved at a kitchen table.
From ‘Almost Blind’ to Reading Eye Charts
In describing the starting point for the people his company treats, Hodak repeatedly returns to the phrase “almost blind,” a characterization that signals more than mild blurriness or age-related decline. According to the account he gives in the interview, these are individuals whose visual impairment has already stripped away many of the basic tasks that sighted people take for granted, from recognizing faces across a room to navigating unfamiliar spaces without assistance. By anchoring his claims in that level of severity, he sets a high bar for what counts as success and implicitly invites comparison with earlier generations of therapies that often delivered only partial or unstable improvements.
Against that backdrop, Hodak’s assertion that these same patients can “read every letter on an eye chart” after treatment is presented as a dramatic endpoint rather than a modest gain. The interview describes this outcome as a single continuum of improvement, running from “almost blind” at baseline to full eye-chart reading once the vision-restoring approach has taken effect, and it treats that continuum as evidence of a step-change in clinical results rather than a series of small, incremental steps. For ophthalmologists, regulators, and insurers, the distinction matters, because a technology that can reliably move patients along that entire spectrum would reshape expectations about what is possible for people with severe visual loss.
Regaining Everyday Skills: Crossword Puzzles and Beyond
Hodak’s choice to spotlight patients who can “do crossword puzzles” after treatment serves as a shorthand for the return of fine-detail vision that clinical charts alone cannot fully capture. Completing a crossword requires the ability to read small print, track clues across a page, and shift focus repeatedly between grid and questions, all tasks that are extremely difficult for someone who is “almost blind.” In the interview, that example functions as a narrative bridge between the sterile environment of the exam room and the lived reality of patients who want to read books, follow recipes, or scan a smartphone screen without constant frustration.
The pairing of “read every letter on an eye chart” and “do crossword puzzles” in the El País report underscores both clinical and everyday functional gains, presenting them as two sides of the same transformation rather than separate achievements. On one side are the standardized measures that doctors and regulators rely on to judge efficacy, such as the ability to identify progressively smaller letters under controlled lighting. On the other side are the daily activities that give those numbers meaning, from working through a newspaper crossword to recognizing the label on a medication bottle. By presenting these outcomes together, Hodak suggests that the vision-restoring approach he describes is not only meeting formal benchmarks but also restoring a level of independence that can change how patients participate in work, family life, and leisure.
Why These Outcomes Mark a New Phase in Vision Treatment
Hodak’s description of patients moving from “almost blind” to reading “every letter on an eye chart” positions the technology he is promoting as a major leap beyond the incremental improvements that have characterized many earlier interventions. In the interview, that framing is not incidental, because it signals a shift from therapies that might slow deterioration or offer partial clarity to approaches that aim to rebuild functional sight to a level that satisfies both clinical standards and patient expectations. For people living with severe visual impairment, the difference between marginal gains and the ability to read an entire eye chart can determine whether they remain dependent on assistive devices or regain enough acuity to manage daily tasks unaided.
The same interview frames these patient stories as evidence that vision-restoring interventions are transitioning from experimental promise to tangible, life-changing results, at least for the specific cases Hodak describes. By focusing on concrete tasks such as eye charts and crossword puzzles, he grounds ambitious claims in observable experiences that can be verified in a clinic or at home, rather than in abstract projections about future capabilities. That focus has implications for how investors, clinicians, and patient advocates evaluate the field, because it shifts the conversation from whether such technologies might work someday to how widely and reliably they can deliver the kind of outcomes Hodak highlights.
