COOL BLIND TECH

YOUR SOURCE FOR THE BEST ASSISTIVE TECH NEWS, REVIEWS AND INTERVIEWS FROM TOP BLIND AND LOW VISION EXPERTS. AN ENTERTAINING AND TRUSTWORTHY DISCUSSION ON EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES

CES 2018

Father Invents Learning Game for Daughter Who Is Going Blind

Jake Lacourse of Middleborough, Massachusetts, was honored at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas for creating a game he calls BecDot. It’s designed to help his 2-year-old daughter, Rebecca, learn pre-braille concepts.

Rebecca has Usher syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that can cause profound deafness and progressive blindness.

“We knew the world was not going to adapt to her,” Lacourse says. “My entire career has been about solving problems.”

Lacourse is a product engineer by day. By night, he worked at home developing the game for Rebecca. The playing surface, made with a 3-D printer, is about the size of a tablet. Four large braille cells run across its front. When a toy — like a cow or a pig, each embedded with an electronic tag — is placed onto the tablet, the corresponding braille dots for a cow or pig pop up. read more

ThirdEye’s X1 Smart Glasses Never Forgets a Face

ThirdEye’s X1 Smart Glasses uses augmented reality to perform any number of tasks, including recognizing individual people by their faces, which can potentially be helpful for those who are blind or visually impaired.

The product of Princeton, New Jersey-based technology firm ThirdEye, the X1 Smart Glasses feature dual-eye, 720p lenses that provide a truly immersive experience.

The camera can capture 13 Megapixel images or video at up to 4K resolution. The dual batteries, which are located in the arms, promise a reasonable 6 to 7 hours of battery life. The glasses weigh just 9 ounces, and offer both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity. They charge via a USB-C port, and possess a microSD card slot for storage. The X1 Smart Glasses run a modified version of Android that ThirdEye developed itself. The company also plans to launch its own app store and plans to target everyday consumers at some point. read more

RightEye’s EyeQ System Uses Eye-Tracking to Diagnose Health Issues

There’s more to your eyesight than just whether or not you can see. Often, your vision can be a window to other health issues, like autism, Parkinson’s and even whether you have a concussion. That’s the idea behind RightEye’s EyeQ system, which aims to revolutionize the optometrist office with eye-tracking tech to not only diagnose issues, but to offer therapeutic measures to correct them as well. At CES 2018, the company released a brand new all-in-one EyeQ terminal that incorporates a PC, a monitor as well as a Tobii eye-tracking camera that promises to do all of that and more. read more

CTA Foundation Announces Winners of CES 2018 Accessibility Contest

The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) Foundation announced the winners of the annual Eureka Park Accessibility Contest at CES® 2018: Blind Touch, Lili Smart, SignAll, SofiHub and Unaliwear. The CTA Foundation, a national foundation with the mission to link seniors and people with disabilities with technologies to enhance their lives, is providing each winner with a booth in Eureka Park – the home of startups during CES – and a $2,500 cash prize. CES 2018, the world’s gathering place for all who thrive on the business of consumer technologies, will run January 9-12, 2018, in Las Vegas, Nevada. read more

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