by Joe Lonergan

ARxVision made a big announcement at the CSUN conference. ArxVision is the maker of the Arx AI smart headset for people who are blind or have low vision. This particular model looks a little like bone-conducting headphones.

ArxVision announced they are integrating the Seeing AI app and the NaviLens app into their newly launched ARx AI Gen1.5 headset.

This will mean you can use the popular Seeing AI app from Microsoft hands-free to do common tasks like check currency, read a document, and scan accessible NaviLens labels hands-free all over the world. In public transport stations like London, Berlin, Madrid, Tokyo and many more. If you are not familiar with NaviLens, it is an easy-to-read QR code and easy to scan from a distance and this allows someone with low vision to do it successfully and gather the needed information from the QR code.

When Microsoft started their project to make the Seeing AI app for blind people, part of their vision was to have the app on a headset or a pair of smart glasses like this so people could walk around and get some real-time information about the world around them.

We have spoken a lot about Seeing AI in the past and we have covered NaviLens too, so it is good to see that both these apps are still going strong and looking to improve their offering all the time.

The option to use Seeing AI hands-free will appeal to many people with vision impairment.

This is a pilot project, but we envisage that it will go well and be part of the ARxVision headset going forward.

This announcement has only been made so it is not available here right now, but ARxVision is starting to bring their product to sight loss organisations all over the world. We watch this space with interest.