Award-winning iOS and Android smartphone app Envision, which enables blind and visually impaired people to independently access visual information around them, has announced plans to integrate its AI-powered software technology into Google Glass.
Google Glass is a small, lightweight wearable computer with a transparent display for hands-free work.
Envision developed its software on Google Glass, with the recently upgraded hardware of its Google Glass Enterprise Edition 2. The combination of Envision’s software with Google Glass provides blind and visually impaired users with a less obtrusive and hands-free way of accessing the world around them, empowering users with independence to ‘see’ the world around them.
Envision’s software uses artificial intelligence (AI) to extract different kinds of information from images and then speaks the images out loud so the user has a greater understanding of the environment around them.
According to Envision, its software provides the fastest and most accurate OCR (Optical Character Recognition) available, and can read any type of text from any surface, such as food packaging, posters, computer display screens, QR and barcodes, and handwritten text.
Additionally, the software can recognize faces, describe scenes, detect colours, find objects, and read complex documents and letters. The software is also capable of recognizing text and scripts in more than 60 languages.
First available as an iOS and Android smartphone app, Envision was awarded the Best Accessibility App at the 2019 Google Play Awards.
Now, Envision’s software will now be embedded in smart glasses, providing blind and visually impaired users with a more unobtrusive and hands-free way to access the world around them.
To find out more about how the glasses work, watch the video here.
Karthik Kannan, Co-Founder of Envision, commented: “Working with Google Glass’ technical specifications and build quality has been ideal for our development needs.”
“The level of support we’ve received from the Google Glass team has enabled us to replicate the fantastic user experience of the Envision app and deliver it in a seamless way that empowers blind and visually impaired people worldwide with a hands-free, easy way to ‘see’ the world around them through the spoken word.”
To find out more about the smart glasses or to pre-order them, visit the website.
Envision Glasses are available for preorder, with “super early bird” pricing of $1,699, “early bird” at $1,899, and a regular retail price of $2,099. They’re expected to begin shipping to the earliest customers in August 2020.
