The app uses AI to recognize people, objects, and scenes
by James Vincent@jjvincent
Jul 12, 2017

Microsoft has released Seeing AI a smartphone app that uses computer vision to describe the world for the visually impaired. With the app downloaded, the users can point their phone’s camera at a person and it’ll say who they are and how they’re feeling. They can also point it at a product and it’ll tell them what it is. All of this is done using artificial intelligence that runs locally on their phone.

Microsoft’s New iPhone App Narrates the World for Blind People full article

A new iPhone app uses machine learning to identify objects for people with poor eyesight, and it doesn’t need an Internet connection. by Rachel Metz
Originally posted March 25, 2016

As I walked around my office on a recent morning, a female voice on my iPhone narrated the objects I passed. “Brick,” “wall,” “telephone,” she said matter-of-factly. The voice paused when I came upon a bike hung on a wall-mounted rack, then intoned, “bicycle.”

App Spots Objects for the Visually Impaired full article

Jamie Pauls

Technology continues to improve the way people who are blind interact with technology and make use of the Internet. In any major screen reader release, improvements to the way the product works on the Web are front and center in all “What’s New” documentation. Furthermore, modern software applications make use of, and behave like, webpages to such an extent that it can often be difficult to know where a desktop application ends and the Internet begins.

CAPTCHA Be Gone from Accessible Apps Removes Another Barrier to Accessibility full article

Date:October 17, 2016 Source:American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO)

A unique wearable artificial vision device may help people who are legally blind “read” and recognize faces. It may also help these individuals accomplish everyday tasks with significantly greater ease than using traditional assistive reading devices, suggests a study presented today at AAO 2016, the 120th annual meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology.

Approximately 246 million people worldwide have low vision. This sight loss impairs a person’s ability to do simple daily tasks. Optical and electronic devices such as hand-held magnifiers, tele-microscopic glasses and computer and video magnifiers can help. But, typically these devices are bulky, cumbersome or not readily portable. With recent advancements in wearable electronic devices and optical character recognition technology that converts images to computer-readable text, University of California, Davis researchers hypothesized that these newer technologies could help improve patients’ ability to function in daily life.

Wearable Artificial Vision Device Shows Promise in Helping People Who Are Legally Blind ‘Read’ full article

AL BEACH, California, June 21, 2016, PRNewswire

NuEyes, a pioneer in the field of low vision technology, and mac-fusion, Orange County’s Premier Apple Authorized Reseller and Service Provider, are proud to announce an exclusive partnership to bring NuEyes wireless, a wearable CCTV headset, to visually impaired users across Southern California.

Photo – http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160620/381552

NuEyes, featuring ODG smartglasses, magnifies (up to 12x) and displays enhanced versions of anything that a user looks at.

mac-fusion and NuEye’s shared dream for this partnership is to give people with vision loss in Orange County access to wireless hand-free magnification technology that can be used anywhere to increase their mobility, independence and quality of life.

NuEyes, the Newest Head-Mounted and Hands-Free Wearable Technology, Makes CCTV and Text-to-Speech Capabilities Available in an Easy-to-Use Headset full article

Jun 13, 2016

“It is better than any cane or guide dogs”. That is how a user describes a new assistive device in the market for people with vision disabilities. Another 20-yr-old B.Com student says, “I feel liberated. There is a sense of freedom. I am very, very happy.”

Blind Cane UserRelegating the traditional blind man’s walking stick to the past, a recently developed wearable device in the form of a ring seeks to change the way the people with vision disabilities can move around.

This mobility device can help a person with vision disability navigate his way by sending haptic feedback or vibrations through the sense of touch.

Wearable Device to Guide People With Vision Disabilities full article

An engineering student and professor help the blind and visually impaired in the Joseph Kohn Training Center in New Brunswick to navigate their surroundings Monday, February 22, 2016
By Todd B. Bates

Using a high-tech 3-D printer, a Rutgers undergraduate and his professor created sophisticated braille maps to help blind and visually impaired people navigate a local training center.

The three plastic tactile maps are for each floor at the Joseph Kohn Training Center, a state-funded facility for the blind and visually impaired in New Brunswick. And the goal is to print maps for all of the center’s students.

Braille Maps for Blind and Visually Impaired Created with 3-D Printing Technology at Rutgers full article

College Station, TX
By Ben Gruber

The communication barrier between deaf people who use sign language and those that don’t understand it may be coming to an end thanks to a new wearable technology being developed at Texas A&M University.

The device incorporates a system of sensors that records the motion of hand gestures, as well as the electromyography or EMG signals produced by muscles in the wrist when signing.

“We decode the muscle activities we are capturing from the wrist. Some of it is coming from the fingers indirectly because if I happen to keep my fist like this versus this, the muscle activation is going to be a little different,” said Roozbeh Jafari, an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Texas A&M University.

Wearable Tech to Decode Sign Language full article