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

Shopping

Smart Display Tech Makes Shopping Easier for Visually Impaired Customers

Tech companies are generally slow when it comes to making their products accessible to people with disabilities. But lately, some of them have been working on innovative projects that will accommodate more users. One of the most interesting of these comes from a Chinese company called Alibaba, which introduced a smart display technology to help the visually impaired with shopping and payments on their phones.

Alibaba’s R&D wing, Damo Academy, collaborated with China’s Tsinghua University to develop a cheap silicone sheet with sensory buttons that go on top of a smartphone display. The sheet, which costs just 3.6 cents to produce has three small buttons on each side; you can press them to perform actions like ‘Confirm’ or ‘Go back’ while using supported apps. read more

Blind and Low Vision Customers Get Help Shopping at Supermarket with New App

Wegmans Food Markets is the first grocery chain in the U.S. to partner with Aira, a mobile app that offers next generation shopping assistance to customers who are blind or have low vision.

As the first partner in the Aira Supermarket Network, all 97 Wegmans stores are now Aira Access Locations, giving any member of the blind and low-vision community free access to Aira’s service while in Wegmans stores.

Aira offers real-time assistance from trained professionals during shopping trips, using live camera streams, a mobile app and/or smart glasses. Blind or low vision individuals can use their smartphones as streaming devices, essentially bringing a professional along with them to help locate the apples in the produce section using a real-time visual of the store and verbal directions. Aira employees can also use the internet to look up, for example, the type of milk a customer might be looking for or where the salsa can be found in the store, and relay that information to the shopper. read more

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