Aided Technology for the Visually Impaired

INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGIES FOR THE VISUALLY IMPAIRED

Products From Us

Ocutech

Ocutech bioptics helps individuals with low vision to see and do things they may have never thought possible!
  • Ocutech bioptics can help you read signs, see the faces of loved ones, watch TV, read the computer, see at school and at work.
  • They may even let you to drive.* Ocutech telescopic bioptics make things larger and easier to see. They can help you for almost every type of activity.
For People Who Are Blind or Visually Impaired!
  • OrCam MyEye is a revolutionary voice activated device that attaches to virtually any glasses.
  • It can instantly read to you text from a book, smartphone screen or any other surface, recognize faces, help you shop on your own, work more efficiently, and live a more independent life!
  • OrCam MyEye conveys visual information audibly, in real-time and offline.

Trysight

Designed for the Visually Impaired!
  • Trysight enhances sight for the overwhelming majority of individuals living with low vision.
  • The most advanced wearable assistive technology for people who are blind or visually impaired, provides independence by allowing access to visual information, conveyed by audio, on a tiny camera which can be attached to any pair of eyeglasses.
  • Using Artificial Intelligence it reads text, recognizes faces, identifies products, and more.

Magnifying Glasses

PORTABLE & EASY TO USE!
  • The handheld video magnifier is completely portable at a lightweight of 7.8 ounces and fits in a purse or large pocket.
  • Simple control buttons are symbolically marked and there are only 3 to learn.
  • There is also an automatic shut-off feature that will activate between 2 and 5 minutes of non-use to save battery time.

Speak with our Low Vision Device Advocate

Shantanu Chowdhury
+91-9643323027
info@ephizo.com

The ‘regular’ life of a vision-impaired person is filled with challenging, and sometimes dangerous, situations in their day-to-day life.

AR is not about creating a virtual world; it’s about changing our real world into a virtual one. AR does not create an artificial environment.

VR may be defined as ‘The sum of the hardware and software systems that seek to perfect an all-inclusive, sensory illusion of being present in another environment’.

It’s a known fact that estimated number of visually impaired person in the world is about 285 million, approximately equal to the 20% of the Indian Population.

OUR VISION AND MISSION

EphiZo aspires to enable the BLIND and/or VISION IMPAIRED to live a life of DIGNITY by allowing them to experience a life of SELF RELIANCE and POSITIVITY.
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Artificial Intelligence (AI) for the Vision-Impaired

The ‘regular’ life of a vision-impaired person is filled with challenging, and sometimes dangerous, situations in their day-to-day life. Their loved ones and even strangers are anxious about their safety when they navigate their way alone in the city. We, as people who can see, are always aware of our surroundings. So just imagine what it would be like to be vision-impaired and to not know what lies ahead! According to the World Health Organization, a staggering 1.3 billion worldwide live with some form of vision-impairment. Imagine their plight.

In comes AI, which can enhance the ‘regular’ life of the vision-impaired in many revolutionary ways. AI is a study and creation of computer systems that can perceive, reason and act. It is a new and innovative technology that is enjoying a meteoric rise at the moment. AI can store large amounts of information and can process it at high speed. It is a representation and/or duplication of human intelligence. With the increase in the growth of technology, these intelligent systems are also useful for humans in their everyday lives. AI-fueled gadgets can be our companions and help us do our daily tasks. Humans mostly communicate through non-verbal activities, such as facial expressions, gestures, body language and a tone of voice to communicate their emotions. There are a large number of emotions in every human’s range. Big data is used to collect these emotions as any normal storage device will not suffice. Emotional Intelligence (EI) is the area of cognitive ability that facilitates interpersonal behavior. The five basic components of EI are self-awareness; self; motivation; empathy and social skills. Today technology has been successful in inventing and constantly refining the technical aspects of both AI and EI, thereby improving the quality of life for the vision-impaired!  

Self-driving cars and automated vehicles will definitely be counted as some of the most prominent innovations of the 21st century. These innovations are powered by advanced levels of AI and Machine Learning Technology that have the ability to sense, process, react and adapt to external factors, just like humans. When it comes to safety, AI can not only predict and anticipate responses, but it can also prevent and mitigate the consequences of collision and roadblocks, leading to a drastic reduction in accidents and a higher human productivity rate. Similar developments in ‘intelligent’ technology in the form of vision-assistive devices give hope and freedom to the visually-impaired. With innovative features like text-to-speech translations that even describe emojis and pictures seen on social media, smart glasses and vision-free communication, this AI-based technology is growing successfully and having a transformational effect on the lives of the visually-impaired. The ever-increasing access to AI-based vision-assistive devices is potentially redefining the lives of the visually-impaired allowing them to experience new levels of self-belief, independence, a better quality of life and emotional liberation.

Augmented Reality

AR is not about creating a virtual world; it’s about changing our real world into a virtual one. AR does not create an artificial environment. It can play with the existing environment and overlay features on it as well. The users could find this method (AR) very addictive, overlaying digital content onto the real world. The user remains aware of his/her environment during the interaction. Designers developing the AR software and apps continue to find some traditional tools very useful e.g., paper, video prototyping, understanding existing mental models etc. AR provides new ways to deliver digital 3D models and data. It proposes a specific use of computer based 3D modelling for the design development process.

The AR system generates a composite view with a combination of a virtual model and/or scene and the physical real life setting in which the viewer is located. The technology has, until recently, been expensive, resource demanding and requiring advanced understanding in the field. It is due to these factors the use has been mainly limited to the military, medical research and other highly specialized applications. In the field of medicine, AR is used in order to make surgery easier, through the visualization method. GPS systems use AR to make it easier to get from point A to point B. There are other numerous applications for AR in the tourism industry. Computer gaming has become more exciting due to these AR features.

With the rise of new technology ‘Wearable Augmented Reality Devices’ are on the rise. To simplify, smart glasses are a new wearable AR device that captures and processes a user’s physical environment and augments it virtual elements. The evolution of media devices evolved in 5 generations, i) Offline = always offline, ii) Web 1.0 = online OR offline, iii) Web 2.0 = online AND offline, iv) Mobile Social Web = ALWAYS and EVERYWHERE online, and finally v) Wearable Augmented Reality (AR) –  offline = online.     

AR glasses may help people with low vision better navigate their environment. In a new study of patients with retinitis pigmentosa, an inherited degenerative eye disease that results in poor vision, researchers found that adapted augmented reality glasses can improve patients’ mobility by 50% and grasp performance by 70%. Patients with retinitis pigmentosa wore adapted AR glasses as they navigated through an obstacle course based on a U.S. Food and Drug Administration-validated functional test. Using video of each test, researchers recorded the number of times patients collided with obstacles, as well as the time taken to complete the course. Patients averaged 50% fewer collisions with the adapted AR glasses. Patients also were asked to grasp a wooden peg against a black background — located behind four other wooden pegs — without touching the front items. Patients demonstrated a 70% increase in grasp performance with the AR glasses.

Virtual Reality (VR)

VR may be defined as ‘The sum of the hardware and software systems that seek to perfect an all-inclusive, sensory illusion of being present in another environment’. Immersion, presence and interactivity are regarded as the core characters of VR technologies. The term interactivity can be described as the degree to which a user can modify the VR environment in real-time. Presence is considered as “the subjective experience of being in one place or environment, even when one is physically situated in another” While researchers largely agree on the definitions of interactivity and presence, differing views exist on the concept of immersion. One branch of researchers suggests that immersion should be viewed as a technological attribute that can be assessed objectively, whereas others describe immersion as a subjective, individual belief, i.e., a psychological phenomenon.  

Loss of sight is close to becoming a major health epidemic globally. In the UK alone it is estimated by the year 2030, approximately 2.7 million people will suffer from visually impairment. This figure is likely to double by mid-century. Clearly, there’s an increasing need for solutions that can help patients with such conditions globally.  This is where technology has shown the much needed path. Advancements in medical technology has been a boon to the visually impaired. Some companies have developed such virtual reality headsets that helps the visually impaired people regain close to almost normal levels of sight. These clinically validated wearable headsets, enables visually impaired people to view things up close and at a distance clearly thereby helping scores of low vision patients improve their sight, read, work and live independently. Companies aim to develop an advanced, flexible, and wearable low vision aid which could transform the lives of people with visual impairments.  With one in three people losing their sight to untreatable sight loss by the age of 65, there is an ever-increasing need for such technology to be made available to all patients with eligible conditions. This headset radically improves the patients’ remaining sight by simulating human vision. It uses a camera to process any incoming images and then projecting the augmented feed onto the working part of a patient’s retina. This device has already transformed the lives of hundreds of people with irreversible sight loss by allowing them to live more independently. Some examples include patients playing musical instruments, painting, knitting, gardening, DIY, and going to the theatre and movies.

Real Time Image Processing

It’s a known fact that estimated number of visually impaired person in the world is about 285 million, approximately equal to the 20% of the Indian Population. They suffer regular and constant challenges in Navigation especially when they are on their own. They are mostly dependent on someone for even accessing their basic day-to-day needs. So, it’s a quite challenging task and the technological solution for them is of utmost importance and much needed.

Millions of people live in this world with incapacities of understanding the environment due to visual impairment. Although they can develop alternative approaches to deal with daily routines, they also suffer from certain navigation difficulties as well as social awkwardness. For example, it is very difficult for them to find a particular room in an unfamiliar environment. Also, blind and visually impaired people find it difficult to know whether a person is talking to them or someone else during a conversation. Computer vision technologies, especially the deep convolutional neural network, have been rapidly developed in recent years. It is promising to use the state-of-art computer vision techniques to help people with vision loss. The sense of sight and hearing sense share a striking similarity: both visual object and audio sound can be spatially localized. It is not often realized by many people that we are capable at identifying the spatial location of a sound source just by hearing it with two ears. The objective is to change the visual world into an audio world by notifying the blind people about the objects in their path. This will help visually impaired people to navigate independently without any external assistance just by using the real-time object detection system. This application uses image processing and machine learning techniques to determine real-time objects through the camera and inform blind people about the object and its location through the audio output. Inability to differentiate between objects has led to many limitations to the existing approach which includes less accuracy and low-performance results. The main objective is to provide good accuracy, best performance results and a viable option for the visually impaired people to make the world a better place for them. There exist multiple tools to use computer vision technologies to assist blind people. The mobile app “TapTapSee” uses computer vision and crowd sourcing to describe a picture captured by blind users in about 10 seconds. The Blind sight offers a mobile app Text Detective featuring optical character recognition (OCR) technology to detect and read text from pictures captured from the camera.

According to world health statistics 285 million out of 7.6 billion population suffers visual impairment; hence 4 out of 100 people are blind.

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