OrCam, a company that manufactures products to facilitate accessibility for the visually impaired, won an award CES Innovation Award for your mounted glasses MyEye Pro device. It helps the blind and visually impaired by reading print and digital text, recognizing people, identifying products and more. OrCam took the award in the CES Innovation Accessibility and Health & Wellness categories.
“We are living in uncertain times, but… our users’ access-related challenges did not stop during the pandemic. If anything, they’ve intensified,” said OrCam co-founder and co-chair Prof. Amnon Shashua at OrCam’s blog post.
MyEye Pro is mounted on a pair of glasses and communicates visual information audibly. A key new feature is “Smart Read” which works like the Crtl-F/CMD-F (Find) functions on a PC or Mac, allowing users to get specific information – something that helped influence the CES panel “A Interactive smart reading capability allows users an experience tailored specifically for them,” the judges wrote.
Another recent feature that arrived last year is the OrCam voice assistant. Users can talk to MyEye Pro (or the company’s portable OrCam Read) to turn on facial recognition or tell the device to read pages from books, newspapers and restaurant menus. “The newly released ‘Hey OrCam’ allows hands-free control of all device features and settings using voice commands,” as the CES judges noted.
As for the hardware itself, the OrCam Eye Pro is an upgrade from the previous OrCam Eye product with a faster processor, two microphones instead of one, longer battery life, improved eyewear attachment and much more. Thanks to processor improvements, it turns on faster and “responds faster and more accurately [for] response to pointing gestures, bar coding and identification of notes and facial recognition,” wrote OrCam.
Just before CES 2021 last year, we noticed that accessibility in the technology had improved, but more needed to be done. Adding functionality to existing products and software is an important part of this, but devices created specifically for that purpose also play a role. “Both OrCam MyEye and OrCam Read were critical devices to ensure our users could continue their academic, professional and personal activities and stay connected to family, friends and society at large,” said Shashua.
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