Talking Eyeglasses

[ysabetwordsmith]

OrCam MyEye attaches to any eyeglasses. It can read text, identify faces, name products, and more. Expensive, but probably much less so than paying for long-distance sighted service.


A probable drawback is that adding weight to one side will be awkward and uncomfortable. Adding an inert weight to the opposite side will fix the imbalance, but increase the risk of head or ear pain. Consider adding a strap, web, or other support to reduce the pressure. Sort of an obvious issue from the perspective of a highly sensitive person, but I bet you that lower-sensitive people won't realize this thing will cross a lot of people's thresholds and won't know how to solve those problems. If you can't find what you need in an eyeglass shop, try cannibalizing the shock web from inside an old helmet. If appearance is an issue, consider the suspension potential of things like hats or wigs. But don't worry, the tech should shrink rapidly as it becomes more popular. In a few years it'll probably fit inside the earpiece of most prescription glasses ... you'll just have to hope designers thought of the weight issues and addressed them effectively.

So this got me thinking about phone apps. There are jillions of smartphone apps now, and identification apps (for trees, health food, etc.) are popular. I wonder how many of these have accessibility features that would let them serve as prosthetic eyes for visually impaired people? And yes, some apps have a speaker function or are actually designed to help vision-impaired users.

In a society that cared about people with disabilities, there would be a simple, easy, cheap way to massively improve life for vision-impaired folks: make all these read-and-see apps free to them. Once it's developed, software essentially costs nothing to replicate. The government could pay developers to make and maintain accessibility apps for blind people. Probably the developers would get a higher and more consistent revenue stream that way than trying to hand-sell these things to consumers one at a time. If you went to an eye doctor or any organization for the blind, they could say, "And here's a list of free computer programs and smartphone apps you can use to compensate for your eye problems." The government would probably save money due to reducing accidents, malnutrition, and other issues that affect disabled people more than abled people. Sadly, I don't see that solution as probable in this society, but there's the instructions in case anyone wants them.

Since the government is a white elephant, programmers could instead solve this problem on their own. Anyone who makes programs could choose a portion of their work to release pro bono. For example, make 9 apps for sale and 1 pro bono, using the recommended 10% tithe for Christians. If you're Muslim, zakat is 2.5% of your qualifying wealth which would be 1 out of 40, probably better to do that by hours unless you write code as fast as I write poetry. If you are well supported, you might choose to make much more of your work pro bono. A nonprofit could make writing free disability apps their whole focus. Someone could then make a website collecting everyone's free accessibility apps, and advertise that website to eye doctors and organizations serving the blind.

As yet another option, people with disabilities could write accessibility programs. Computer programming is a skill that easily evades most disabilities. You don't need to be able to move or type or talk, you just need to be able to think and communicate in some fashion with an interface, then have a program that lets you do stuff. So most people with the mental potential could learn to code if they wanted to. (Not everyone thinks well in that direction.) It might be more effective to have sighted people write apps for vision-impaired people, and so on, but then again the very different perspective of blind programmers could be useful. If I were a tech company, I'd seriously consider building mixed-ability teams for sake of parallax. A team with an abled programmer, a blind programmer, a deaf programmer, a paraplegic programmer, and a neurovariant programmer should be able to write some seriously badass code.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

What about another gadget as a counterweight? I've occasionally tried to rig up my glasses with a tiny flashlight...

[we_are_spc]

I like Orgcam somewhat, but it's sometimes hard to hold your head level, which is what you need in order for it to work correctly. The face recognition is nice, though.

Aira is expensive )The lowest plan that doesn't need glasses is 29.99 for 30 minuts; the others start at 100 a month) but I find it worth my time and money because it's a trained person on the phone with you. Som3e don't like it because it cuts down on the probably with interacting with local humans, but for areas where there aren't many (Line my route to the bus stop) it comes in very handy.

It also comes in handy for cooking and other sight-necessary tasks because both my room mates have mobility restrictions, so can't do much to help me once they are in a seated position for the day.

The old glasses have the camera mounted on the right side of the glasses; the new ones have it right in the middle. where the third i would be were it to go on the forehead. They are also better designed. The bad thing is a teather cord for the video, but I'd be OK with that if it means a more comfortable fit.

-Trausio~

[heron61]

Wow, that's impressive and sounds like it would be exceptionally helpful to people with serious vision issues.

On a far more frivolous level, I'm regularly tempted by the various wearable cameras that continuously record 10-30 seconds to eliminate time fumbling for a camera, but most are fairly low grade cameras, and I'd want one for things like nature photography or good quality cat vids.

Of course, what I really want is something like Google glass with a high quality camera that also does facial recognition and augmented reality - given that I'm roughly in the bottom 25% wrt facial recognition capabilities, something that could match names to people while also providing heads-up navigation when walking, and providing a hands free camera would be something I'd be willing to pay a fair amount for.

[fayanora]

Oh my Goddess, that thing reminds me of something in my Ravenstone story. Vedya uses smart glasses linked to a smart phone to compensate for her face blindness, so her phone recognizes faces for her. And her sibling Chooli uses the same sort of setup to translate spoken words into sign language, since she is deaf.

Also, Dalia is a multiple whose two other alters can manifest invisible bodies that are mostly intangible, but they can move things when they wish to. They use a smartphone with text to speech if they want to communicate with other people with the having to have Dalia relay their words, and without having to front.

So, a lot of adaptive technology in that family.