From low vision to blindness, visual impairment affects the quality of life of many people by inhibiting their ability to interact comfortably with the world around them.
Activities that you might take for granted- such as ordering food off a menu at a restaurant, deciding what to purchase at a supermarket, counting money, and even reading the newspaper can be a daily challenge for millions of people across the world.
Over the years, our engagement with people with visual impairments have revealed numerous difficulties with existing state-of-the-art technologies including problems with accuracy, mobility, efficiency, cost, and more importantly social exclusion.
A wearable assistive device that allows the visually impaired to independently access information on the go.
The finger-worn accessory allows users to simply point at products, restaurant menus, signs etc. and hear the result spoken back to them through a headset.
Synthesize printed text to speech in seconds.
Extract logos, colors and object characteristics.
Designed for all-day usage.
The nature and design of the ring apparatus are driven by lessons from established design frameworks for both natural interaction and assistive technologies.
We hope to sustainably change how to visually impaired experience the world.
The FingerReader empowers the communities who would otherwise have no access to assistive technology because they were either too expensive or did not fulfill the user expectations.
Through continous engagement with blind users and their caretakers, we have developed a thoughtful product that tackles the social stigma associated with assistive technologies, while providing quick and accurate responses in a mobile setting.
I believe the FingerReader will help in three ways. Firstly, it will scaffold persons with visual impairments in their daily activities. Secondly, it will provide greater user satisfaction for blind persons (or those with visual impairments). Thirdly, it will encourage greater design innovation in the field of assistive technology.
Our partners include the SUTD AH Lab, the SUTD-MIT International Design Centre, the MIT Media Lab, the Singapore Association for the Visually Handicapped, SGEnable, TOTEBoard and VIBUG.
The FingerReader is under active development at the Augmented Human Lab at the The University of Auckland. We welcome research collaborations and industry engagements. Please contact us if you share our vision and would like to collaborate with our team.
Augmented Human Lab
Auckland Bioengineering Institute
Level 5
70 Symonds Street
Auckland, New Zealand. 1010
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