For the First Time, Visually Impaired People Can Read More Efficiently than Sighted Individuals with OrCam Technologies’ Breakthrough “Smart Reading” Capability

JERUSALEM, July 27, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — OrCam Technologies, a leader in personal, AI-driven innovations, today announced the U.S. release of a new, interactive AI feature class that the company will integrate with its assistive technology platforms. OrCam’s voice-activated, interactive Smart Reading feature enables users who are blind, visually impaired, or have reading challenges, including dyslexia, to tailor the assistive reading experience to their specific areas of interest using intuitive voice commands. 

Smart Reading, which combines OrCam’s advanced computer vision and natural language understanding (NLU) technologies, operates as a “voice-activated assistant” to make any text – whether in print or digital formats – even more accessible to the reader when using OrCam’s original breakthrough text-to-speech reading engine. Activated by the user’s voice, the algorithms driving the Smart Reading feature listen to – and comprehend – the user’s requests, retrieving the relevant information, and reading the requested text to the user within a few seconds.

“After devoting 10 years of R&D efforts to developing our pioneering OrCam MyEye device, we are proud to now offer the interactive Smart Reading feature, which takes AI-enabled assistive reading to an entirely new level of accessibility for people with visual impairments and those with reading challenges,” said Prof. Amnon Shashua, OrCam Technologies Co-founder and Co-CEO. “We work tirelessly to create sustainable and long-lasting solutions that set the bar on the level of independence artificial vision technology can provide for people whose access to the world may be restricted, opening up new opportunities and enhancing their quality of life.”

To access specific information within a text, the user utilizes simple voice commands, such as: “Read [newspaper] headlines,” “Start from vegetarian [menu items],” or “Read amounts [of a bill].” Retrieving only the requested information, Smart Reading becomes the “brain” that powers OrCam’s text-to-speech engine, serving as a voice-activated assistant that understands and responds to what the user wants to know.

The Smart Reading feature can be integrated with both the OrCam MyEye  as well as the OrCam Read  devices. The voice-activated, wearable OrCam MyEye device, for people who are blind or have low vision, instantly reads any printed text and digital screens out loud, recognizes faces, and identifies products/bar codes, money notes and colors. Magnetically mounted on the wearer’s eyeglass frames and weighing only 22.5 g/0.8 oz., OrCam MyEye is the only wearable assistive technology for vision impairment that can be activated by an intuitive pointing gesture.

OrCam Read, the first-of-its-kind handheld digital reader, empowers people with language processing challenges, including dyslexia. Leveraging OrCam’s breakthrough computer vision technology, the lightweight OrCam Read is the only personal AI reader to instantly capture and read out loud full pages of text and digital screens. The device features intuitive point-and-click operation, which activates two precision laser guidance options, to read the entire highlighted text or target where to begin reading.

OrCam harnesses breakthrough AI-driven computer vision and machine learning to innovate wearable and handheld platforms that provide increased independence to the device users, delivering “AI as a companion” – with all OrCam products operating in real time and completely offline, thereby ensuring data privacy. OrCam’s flagship OrCam MyEye device, for people who are blind or visually impaired, was chosen as a 2019 TIME Best Invention.

About OrCam Technologies: OrCam Technologies, a leader in personal, wearable AI platforms, was jointly founded in 2010 by Israeli innovators Prof. Amnon Shashua and Mr. Ziv Aviram, who are also the Co-founders of Mobileye (an Intel company), the collision avoidance system leader and autonomous driving innovator. Inspired by this development of ground-breaking artificial vision technology that supports safer driving, OrCam harnesses AI-driven computer vision to provide increased independence to people who are blind or visually impaired, are hearing impaired, have reading difficulties, and for other populations. The company’s flagship OrCam MyEye assistive technology device was named to the TIME Best Inventions of 2019 list.

For more information: www.orcam.com and YouTube and follow OrCam on Facebook and Twitter.

Media contact: 
Nicole Kaufman-Grubner
Finn Partners for OrCam Technologies
nicole.grubner@finnpartners.com
@nicolegrubner

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SOURCE OrCam Technologies