The Paradigm Shift in Innovation: Remixing Existing Tech to Advance Accessibility

On Tech & Vision With Dr. Cal Roberts

This podcast is about big ideas on how technology is making life better for people with vision loss.

Technology developed specifically for people with low vision has historically been bespoke, specific, and expensive, requiring the creation of new technology for a relatively small population of users. But recently we’re seeing a paradigm shift from building new vision tech from scratch to building on top of existing technology that most people use daily.

In this episode, Dr. Cal talks with Karthik Mahadevan, the founder and CEO of Envision, about how his technology company builds on existing tech, like smartphones and smart glasses, to benefit users with low vision. Envision’s software uses AI to recognize important visual cues in a user’s environment and then relays that information to the user with computer-generated speech. Karthik’s breakthrough realization early on that he didn’t need to build hardware when he could just tap into the cameras of smartphones and smart glasses that people already owned, enabling Envision to reach a much wider audience.

The episode also features an interview with Troy Otillio, the CEO of Aira. Aira’s platform links users to a human visual interpreter, who can access the camera on their device and guide the user through the task, whether reading a letter, navigating a grocery store, or finding their way around an unfamiliar city.

Ultimately, the future of creating vision technology might not be in reinventing the wheel but in improving it and figuring out how to turn the tech people already use every day into easy and accessible solutions for people with low vision.

The Big Takeaways

• Building on Existing Tech: Karthik stresses that for vision tech to be impactful, it has to be accessible. He describes his inspiration as building on top of existing consumer technology to create Envision and thus create a product that millions of people already have the hardware to operate. Later, Dr. Cal discusses the “Taco Bell Phenomenon”, which theorizes that while there may be no such thing as a new idea, the novel combinations of existing ideas are so infinite that they may be limitless.
• The Importance of a Visual Interpreter: Karthik discusses the limitations of communication formats such as braille and audio announcements in public places for people with vision impairment. While well-meaning, they can never really provide complete access to spaces that are meant to be navigated visually. That’s where Envision comes in, allowing access to the camera on a smartphone or smart glasses to give the user a complete and accurate sense of their environment.
• Would You Like a Human for That?: To AI or not to AI? Speech-to-text technology is advanced enough that it can excel at reading something simple like a gas bill or a chicken soup recipe. But what if you got a birthday card from your grandchildren? Troy Otillio discusses how Aira recently partnered with Envision to offer their human visual interpreters as part of Envision’s technology — providing camera access to a human agent who can fully understand the nuance of the user’s situation.
• We Don’t Make Hardware: A small market company like Envision doesn’t have the capacity to build smart glasses (or smartphones) from scratch. The cost would be too high for a company that necessarily has a limited user base. Instead, the future of vision technology is likely to be in creating apps or finding novel uses for hardware that already exists. This will provide accessibility to people with vision impairments via tools they’re already quite familiar with.

Tweetables

• “In the future, these AI are going to interact with other AIs… You know, someone like a Walmart will have their own AI. Someone like a Target will have their own AI. And your AI can speak to that AI and ask for specific information. And that's when it becomes super, super exciting.” — Karthik Mahadevan, Envision Founder & CEO
• “So for many years, consumer electronics was evolving in one direction, and assistive technology was evolving in a different direction. But what I noticed recently is this merger of the two: that consumer electronics are becoming more accessible.” — Dr. Cal Roberts, Lighthouse Guild President & CEO
• “You can look at Aira as just a layer, an accessibility layer that exists for when an automated solution, a pure software solution, doesn't work or when there is no solution, right? We're like that, call it a backstop, a more general purpose layer that you can always fall back to.” — Troy Otillio, Aira CEO

Contact Us:

• Contact us at [e-mail] with your innovative new technology ideas for people with vision loss.

Pertinent Links

• Lighthouse Guild
• Envision
• Aira