Bull Transcript
Speaker 2:
If you’re blind or have low vision,
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Be My Eyes is a must have tool.
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No matter where you are
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Or what language you speak
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You can call up on-demand visual support in seconds.
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In seconds.
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From a pool of more than two million volunteers
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Two million volunteers
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And the best part is
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It’s completely free.
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It’s completely free.
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No matter how many times you use it
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No matter how much you use it
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Completely free.
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Besides the option to call volunteers
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You can also use Be My Eyes’ new feature
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Specialized Help
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To get quick, high quality
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Video custom service
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Directly from companies like Microsoft
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And Google
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All within the Be My Eyes app
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On Android
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Or iOS.
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Join the community
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Join the community
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Today
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Today.
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On the web at www.bemyeyes.com.
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Enable the Blind Abilities skill on your Amazon device just by saying enable blind abilities.
Jeff Thompson:
Welcome to Blind Abilities. I’m Jeff Thompson.
Jeff Thompson:
I’m at the National Council of State Agencies for the Blind in Washington, D.C., actually Bethesda, and I caught up with Monty from Orcam.
Jeff Thompson:
How are you doing, Monty?
Monty:
I’m very good. Thank you.
Jeff Thompson:
There’s some great news coming out of Israel there. I heard that Orcam was used at the voting stations.
Monty:
Correct. Our team in Israel had adjusted the system to be able to help blind and visually-impaired people in the voting.
Monty:
In many of the voting stations, we had the Orcam.
Jeff Thompson:
Oh, that’s awesome. And that’s the MyEye 2.0.
Jeff Thompson:
Can you tell us a little bit about that? I just held one, and it’s very light and it’s about the size of a small pack of gum.
Monty:
Correct. So MyEye 2.0 is our latest generation. Beauty of the Orcam MyEye 2.0 is we packed so much technology and computing power in this little device. The device converts visual information to audio, and it can read printed text for you from any surface, any size of font. It can recognize faces, recognize products, money, color, and even give you the time. Device has Bluetooth inside it so it connects to earbuds with Bluetooth. We have a companion app on the iPhone that can help you operate the device and set up the device.
Jeff Thompson:
That’s really good. I like some of the gesture bases. You just pretended to look at your watch and now all of a sudden it just told you the time.
MyEye:
The time is 9:01 AM.
Monty:
Another way to get time is by using voice commands. I will double-tap on the device …
Monty:
Tell time.
MyEye:
The time is 9:01 AM.
Jeff Thompson:
So just by tapping and gestures, you can get all your commands that you need.
Monty:
Yes.
Monty:
Tapping and gestures does most of the work. We also have voice commands that help us with running the device, getting time, and controlling the device speed of reading, the volume, and all that.
Jeff Thompson:
One of the big things is that OCR. Someone that just wants to snap it to their frame of their glasses … I think it’s magnetic, right?
Monty:
Yes, it’s magnetic, and it can go on both sides of the glasses so it can be for right-handed people, usually we put it on the right side, and for left-handed, we put it on the left.
Monty:
Sometimes it’s also a function of the hearing because the device converts the visual information to audio, so if someone doesn’t have good hearing on the right ear, we would recommend them to use their left side of the glasses.
Jeff Thompson:
It seems like one of the most easiest and intuitive ways for someone that has recently gone blind to just continue reading their newspaper, magazines, articles, ’cause the OCR works really good on this.
Monty:
Yeah, Orcam, I think the major strength of Orcam it’s our OCR. The technology was developed in-house. Our OCR supports 16 languages including Chinese, which, by itself, it’s a challenging language for OCR.
Jeff Thompson:
Well great.
Jeff Thompson:
Well, Monty, is there anything else you would like to share with our listeners?
Monty:
Sure. If you’re interested, go on our website, www.Orcam.com.
Monty:
Thank you.
Jeff Thompson:
All right, thanks.
[Music] [Transition noise] -When we share
-What we see
-Through each other’s eyes…
[Multiple voices overlapping, in unison, to form a single sentence]
…We can then begin to bridge the gap between the limited expectations, and the realities of Blind Abilities.
Jeff Thompson:
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