[simonster]

With nearsightedness, you can have nearly normal vision 1 foot away even if you have much worse vision 20 feet away. With this system I suspect you can see things better when they're closer just because they encompass more of the visual field, but you probably can't see something 1 foot away nearly as well as a myopic person with 20/250 vision.

On the other hand, you might still be able to read. The vOICe people published a paper (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896627312...) that shows that regions of the brain that are activated by letters/words in normal individuals and by Braille reading in the blind are activated by vOICe after training.