Change Makers: A Podcast from APH

Cool Technology at CES 2025

• American Printing House • Episode 116

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Narrator:

<silence> Welcome to Change Makers , a podcast from APH. We're talking to people from around the world who are creating positive change in the lives of people who are blind or have low vision. Here's your host.

Sara Brown:

Hello and welcome to Change Makers . I'm APH's Public Relations Manager, Sara Brown . And on today's episode, we're going to the floor of the Consumer Electronics Show. We're gonna explore the latest technology perfect for individuals who are blind or low vision. I'm gonna pass it off to APH's own Mike May. He's our Navigation Technology Advisor and was inducted into the Consumer Technology Hall of Fame in 2023. Take it away, Mike.

Mike May:

Okay, thank you Sara. This is Mike May.

Gena Harper:

This is Gena Harper. Thank you for inviting us to the podcast.

Mike May:

Yeah . We attend CES to learn and to advocate for accessible products. Um, there are thousands of vendors. There are some 140,000 attendees this , uh, 2025 year , uh, our thanks to the CTA foundation for facilitating the guides and hosting an accessibility roundtable. I've been attending CES since 1984, and Gena joined a couple years ago. My first recorded CES reports were in the late nineties and early two thousands. I was reporting for Playback magazine, hosted for many years by Ed Potter, the late Ed Potter. And so this podcast is dedicated to him. And those were on cassette and I recorded interviews with the , uh, vendors and then that over time I just dropped off. I didn't, there was a lot of work to do all that recording. So I'm happy to say this year we're bringing back the recording of the vendors. Gena did 27 or so clips for social media, and so we'll be playing those and commenting on them as we go along. We will be alternating between the specific accessibility companies and there are a lot more now than there ever used to be. And the mainstream products,

Gena Harper:

Gena, a blind woman of action at CES 2025 in Las Vegas. We're super excited to be here because we get to learn about all kinds of new cool technology. We get to ask a lot of questions. We get to touch things and learn about all the companies.

Mike May:

We're able to navigate this labyrinth with 140,000 people, thousands of exhibits with our guides. CTA Consumer Technology Association provides free guides for blind people for the four or five days of the conference. It's pretty amazing.

Gena Harper:

So we have our guides to help us facilitate everywhere around all the different buildings. It's in many locations and we've had the same guides for multiple years. So that's a total gift. Thank you. CTA. Hey, big shout out from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to my favorite glam cane. And that would be glam cane.com . And what a glam cane is is a very fashionable high-end cane. And in this case it's all blingy and sparkly, which is my absolute favorite. It actually makes me feel super hot, super sexy, and wanna go out and not just have a regular Oh ho hum boring cane. So if you have any need to have a cane, you should definitely check out glam canes.com. I loved how so many people noticed and commented on my cane. So there were people with all kinds of disabilities, including blind people commenting on my cane as well as all the other sided people. So everybody enjoyed my glam cane.

Mike May:

I think that cane was getting as much or more attention than my dog.

Gena Harper:

Yeah, I think so.

Mike May:

So here's our first accessibility booth and Gena doing her interview and talking about this product, which has been at CES for several years now.

Gena Harper:

Gena, a Blind Woman of Action with Cornell at the Consumer Electronic Show, with these super cool glasses, which is really a headset by a company called Dot Lumen .

Guest:

We are trying to replicate what the service dog for the Blind is doing. Not everybody can use a service dog. They're incredibly accessible around the world. We took the same technology that makes a self-driving car drive on the road, but scaled it down to a headset which actually guide using vibration. And

Gena Harper:

You do feel a haptic in your forehead and it rotates from like your right side to your left side, which directionality it's trying to get you to go.

Guest:

So we'll keep you away from obstacles. It will keep you on the sidewalk , but then if you pass next to a crosswalk or if you are next to stairs or anything, it will tell you if you wanna go somewhere specific. So you can go on Google Maps, find a destination, and press share and share it to the glasses. And the glasses will take you there. We are already working on public transport integration. Great . So taking you to like the bus station, helping you get in the right bus and then getting down at at the destination. That's something which was never achieved in technology before.

Mike May:

I think this was the third year that Dot Lumen has been at CES and it has gotten smaller, but it is a fairly cumbersome unit. Gena talked about it as a glasses or headset. It's almost like a helmet, the way that it wraps around your forehead. I am not a huge of the concept of replacing a service dog, as he mentioned. I think with most of these devices, it's better to think of them to augment your cane and your dog and not instead of, but um, that's open for debate. And over time these things get smaller and more powerful. So we shall see.

Gena Harper:

And one of the things when I started attending CES with Mike is I'd see a piece of equipment like this and think, "oh goodness, I would never wear that. That's super impractical." But actually Mike imparted some wisdom to me about just realizing that these are works in progress and we need works in progress to actually end up with a really great product. So all of these are trying out new and different technology like the haptics and the LiDAR and more cameras. And so now when I try these things, I, I really have a real good attitude and I test them and , and I go around the exhibit hall to see if it runs me into things or how it actually works. It's been a much better experience realizing that it is a work in progress and that this just helps progress in action.

Mike May:

And you survive to talk about it.

Gena Harper:

Exactly.

Mike May:

Here's our first mainstream product and this too is a company that I've been seeing for several years and was intrigued by the possibilities for blind people and, and it's pretty cool.

Gena Harper:

This is Francie , the CEO and founder of Bird Buddy . And Mike and I have been avid supporters of Bird Buddy . What

Franci Zidar:

We've noticed is that a lot of our users and customers really love all nature around their homes . It's not just birds, it's butterflies, bees, bugs. So what we're launching is two new products. One is petal . It's this flower shaped camera.

Gena Harper:

It feels like a stem with like , uh, little plant on the end, but it's, it's a camera.

Franci Zidar:

It takes videos and images and captures audio. And it converts that into insights for you as a owner of a garden. Yeah. So it tells you like , uh, the daily happenings, you can send messages to your garden or to plants and they'll kind of tell you what kind of day they have or what they need from you.

Gena Harper:

Even if that we're totally blind. We enjoy Awesome. The sounds and the videos .

Franci Zidar:

The other thing is Wonder Walks . So it has components that are like a bug hotel, bee hotel , uh, butterfly feeder. Then you put Pedal next to it and that captures all that action delivered.

Gena Harper:

Right . Oh , that's amazing.

Franci Zidar:

That's the Bug hotel, right ?

Gena Harper:

Wow.

Franci Zidar:

And that's like a moss with some , uh, flowers.

Gena Harper:

It really feels like a trunk of a tree. Yes. There's beautiful rocks at the top.

Mike May:

So he's talking about the new Bird Buddy accessories. The original product that Gena and I have had for over a year is about a 10 inch bird house . It's on the back fence and when the bird lands on the feeder and starts feeding, it triggers the camera, which sends photos and video to your phone. It tells you what kind of bird it is and you can click on the video to hear the bird pecking and uh, whatever else is going on in your backyard at the time you can hear it. So that's been a lot of fun. You can share those videos with people. You can even run some of the descriptive items like Seeing AI or Be My Eyes, PixieBot to see what more detail you can get from those descriptions. The app started out, I'd call it 30% accessible now, I'd say it's maybe 60% the main things that you would need work pretty well. You wanna know what kind of bird it is and you want to be able to play the video and listen to it. There's a lot of other gallery stuff and more things in the app, which are a little bit hard to navigate. But as with any app, if you get used to it, then you can figure these things out.

Gena Harper:

I love that the products they're adding are now also very tactile. You can interact with them, they feel interesting. They feel as though they integrate the backyard beautifully. And I like that it's not just an app. These new pieces are things like the Butterfly House and the Bee House and the Bug House and things like that. So I'm, I'm really looking forward to adding some of those to our collection.

Mike May:

I was really tickled with the idea that of blind people birdwatching and sure we can hear birds, we can hear about them, you can experience them in the forest, but if one's outside your window and we have a fountain that they often land on and we don't know that they're there, I'd like to know that they're there and even better what kind of bird it is. So I am really pleased with the idea that blind people can bird watch . And I know , uh, another other blind people I've seen on Facebook are using the Bird Buddy. So let's switch back over to another uh, interesting accessibility device.

Gena Harper:

We are here with this cool device, which is the first smart automated guide for the blind. And Luke is gonna describe it to me.

Luke Buckberrough:

What Glide is is a smart device that essentially has two wheels and a stem handle and

Gena Harper:

A little front handle thing, whatever that's for.

Luke Buckberrough:

It's a kickstand for the device, you know, all you're gonna have to do is simply grab onto the handle and you simply just push it forward using the camera that I'm gonna show Gena where it is in the handle right here. Oh , I see. It sees the environment in front of you. Not only are the wheels going to steer you around the obstacles with speakers in the handle as well as haptic feedback, it'll light up the experience in you actually providing you information like stairs ahead, up, down, curb ahead. Wow .

Gena Harper:

The barrier to entry on this is very low. Yes . To learn how to use a cane properly or a guide dog takes training, takes time,

Luke Buckberrough:

Resources.

Gena Harper:

Exactly. So that is a very unique feature of this. And then we're gonna do a demo. So let's just ,

Luke Buckberrough:

Let's kick off the demo.

Mike May:

Yeah. And before the demo I'll make a few comments. I've been very intrigued by this product and kind of on the fence thinking, well who , who's gonna want this? Who is this for? And Amos Miller, the founder of Soundscape from Microsoft and the co-founder of Glide, Glidance is very , um, intentional about getting input from all sorts of different blind people. He said many times that there are a lot of people who don't want to use a cane or deal with the dog and so they just don't go anywhere. And there's a huge market for those people. And I, I think that's, there's probably something to be said for that. But going to the different conferences and seeing the demos and hearing feedback from other blind people, I'm really um, interested to hear how many people who are can to dog users are also intrigued by this. Is it just the cool robot factor? That's probably a little bit of it, but they have solid orders from quite a few people. So I think it's a , it's a real product and they are certainly doing their best to make it adaptable and durable and affordable and all the things you have to do to make a , a product viable.

Gena Harper:

And I think that another market that this is gonna be very successful and it is just seniors aging and people losing their vision. So they've never dealt with blindness. They would have never been to a blindness conference. They probably didn't ever know a blind person and they just start shutting down and feeling isolated. And they're not that open-minded because it's, you know, they're going through something depressing. So I can completely see the case where this would be very appropriate for a person like that and it might just bring back a lot of people's freedom and independence.

Mike May:

And I wonder too, if people use this and they think, well there's situations where maybe a cane's better, maybe it encourages more people to, to learn the cane who might not. Otherwise

Luke Buckberrough:

It's gonna walk you through a door and we're gonna go down a hall. Cool. So and the goal is, is that it's seeing this environment. Yeah. And it's kind of shoreline you to a wall right now.

Gena Harper:

Nice. Yeah. Now if I wanna turn around, do I just hold it straight up and turn

Luke Buckberrough:

Around? So what I want you to do is try that actually stop for a moment. We're gonna push it back and we're just simply gonna walk like this, just turn it around. You're in control ,

Gena Harper:

We're just gonna ourselves ,

Luke Buckberrough:

You're just gonna do a nice 1, 180 . And

Gena Harper:

That felt very smooth. Now you were saying there were stairs there. Should I have kept going just to see what happened at the stairs?

Luke Buckberrough:

So I'll give you an idea of what would happen. A it stopped like it did when you had that break. Yeah . And what it also would do is it actually notify you doing the speakers as well as the haptics uhhuh <affirmative> stairs ahead up. So , so it would notify you the direction of either up or down you, the user could actually command and say, Hey, take me to the left railing, or Hey, take me to the right rail. Oh,

Gena Harper:

Nice. How is it about when somebody can have one of these loop or if they want to get information on it? Uh , it wants me to back

Luke Buckberrough:

Up so I want you to back up 'cause you're about only a three feet away from the big garbage can. Wow. And then you're gonna lean it a little bit more this way. Thank you . And you're gonna walk forward. There we go. There you go.

Mike May:

You can learn more about Glidance at Glidance .io and there's, I know, something like 50 demos around the country this year, so you can actually check it out in person if you haven't seen it before. I would just briefly describe it as looking something like a stick vacuum. So you have a long skinny handle that goes down to the business end that has all of the fancy autonomous electronics down at the end. And that's, you push that around and it's on two wheels

Gena Harper:

Of all the devices that we saw , this is one I could actually see myself using. And I do always tease them because as Mike said, it kinda looks like a vacuum. So I can imagine myself in a hotel lobby and somebody think that I'm part of the housekeeping team <laugh> . So I think they should let it have different colors or you can make it look like a dog or a tiger or just something fun. So to distinguish it from being a vacuum, but it, it does move smoothly. And also when I was using this device, I was not putting one of my hands in front of me. 'cause normally if I'm nervous and it's some new device I've never used, I'm not sure if it's gonna run me into something. I put one of my hands in front of me to protect me a little bit. And in this case I was super relaxed. I was talking to Luke that whole time and just felt super comfortable. So I'm excited to see how it progresses as it it comes to turn into a real usable product.

Mike May:

I, I'm also imagining a blind person trying to navigate with a walker. So if you could put this into a walker, then you have both hands on that support device and you could navigate independently, whereas you really couldn't use a cane and a walker together. Alright , let's go back to a mainstream product. Here's another pretty interesting fun one.

Gena Harper:

I found this super cool company called SweetRobo.

Guest:

This is our machine called Candy Monster and it's our hard candy vending machine. We have M&M's, Skittles, jelly beans, Pez.

Gena Harper:

And then you have another one that makes ice cream.

Guest:

Yeah, it's just around the corner. There's a little cup that comes out onto the robot's pomper on the bottom and it'll go pick up a cup. Any toppings that you select, you can see them on the screen here.

Gena Harper:

They do care about accessibility and so we're connecting them with different options. But let's make one, how do we do that? So you can see or does it have like,

Guest:

You'll be able to soon it's in the works .

Gena Harper:

Do I have chocolate or strawberries an option?

Guest:

Yes ma'am.

Gena Harper:

I'll take strawberry chocolate. Which chocolate sprinkles .

Guest:

And then we can do chocolate, strawberry or caramels syrup. Just strawberry. The screen just finished up and the basket's moving across the bottom of the

Gena Harper:

Machine. Oh cool . And then what is the price point on this machine?

Speaker 10:

$14,200.

Gena Harper:

Great. Okay. Okay, let me try it. Mm oh, super yummy. Thank you for your interest and accessibility.

Guest:

My pleasure . Thank you for coming by.

Mike May:

I'll take two. I think the importance of our advocacy with this company is connecting them with the makers of kiosk accessible software that you'll find in airports and at McDonald's and other places where you have a , a JAWS experience on a device and it's important that this ice cream machine, the SweetRobo, have that capability.

Gena Harper:

I think it's super practical at the price point. I mean it's not cheap, but that a person could buy it and start their own little business or even add it to a BEP location. So I think it actually could help with blind people being entrepreneurs.

Mike May:

Ooh , nice idea. So moving on to another accessibility product. This product has kind of a unique form factor and approach to navigation that I'll tell you more about after we play the video.

Gena Harper:

Tell me about this device. Rob.

Speaker 11:

This is a new first of its kind , uh, navigation device for the blind. A person can orientate their body or based on device instructions and follow any arbitrary winding path to within about three inches of precision. We're calling this a vector to this dial here that will update its position in real time based on your body's movement.

Gena Harper:

It's a hand helping like a remote.

Guest:

We are gonna spawn a virtual target somewhere around you. Your is to try and orientate your body to where it's pointed to . I got it. Is it thumping in your hand right now? Yes. Something. So that means it's on target now. It's moved to a different place and I'll try and find that target.

Gena Harper:

So turn to the left. Okay .

Guest:

Take a few go's to get the hang of yeah, the computer vision on the iPhone and the makes app detect obstacles and basically try to guide a person around these obstacles. We'll probably use audio for contextual information such as, you know, you're approaching stairs by following this in real time . We can basically get a person to orientate themselves as they're walking.

Gena Harper:

Wow, this is a really unique device. Thank you for trying to...

Guest:

Well thank you for coming over

Gena Harper:

The blindness accessibility tools.

Mike May:

So Gena mentioned that it kind of feels like a remote, like a TV remote, but what's unique about it is it has this thumb wheel that you rest your thumb on and that wheel points in the direction that you should walk. So that's how it's navigating you on very narrow spaces. I used it in London walking about a mile from their headquarters to a pub and it took me through parking lots and on sidewalks and in and out of different little twists and turns and it was very, very precise. Now these were routes that they had created, so that's part of the equation that you have to have maps. It is currently working in outdoor environments, but there's no reason it couldn't be linked up with indoor maps as well . So something new in the navigation space in terms of, we have audio and voice and haptics that are pointing us in different directions, but this is a much more definitive way of pointing you with this thumb wheel . Well back to some of the mainstream products in an interesting category. It's not exactly a robot, but it's serving the purpose that might be helpful to some people.

Gena Harper:

This is a super cool metaCat. And you can pet it and it will meow. It's also connected to the internet so you can have a conversation with it. This is kind of the rage these days. You can actually buy this product, metaDog or metaCat on Amazon. Beautiful fur. I think it's a wonderful companion. If somebody is not able to have a pet or needs some companionship or socialization , check it out.

Mike May:

And this cute little dog goes in your lap. It doesn't do anything. You can't put it on the floor and have it go fetch something for you. But when it's in your lap, its head moves around, its eyes move, it makes sounds, it acts like a nice cuddly dog without all the care issues that some people might not want to deal with.

Gena Harper:

And my mom, sadly she has dementia, but she loves her little stuffy, she has stuffy cats and dogs. And so I know she'd really enjoy this. And I also see the importance at senior centers or convalescent homes where maybe the staff is really busy and a person is just sitting isolated alone. And if they had some of these medic cats and dogs around, then the person could have some kind of connection and interaction and the action of heading it as well as Mike said, talking to it and maybe asking it what the weather's gonna be outside and things like that. So I definitely see a purpose for this and it was really affordable. It was between 1 99 and 3 99 depending on the different features .

Mike May:

And I think there were more than one product in that category, right?

Gena Harper:

Yes . There were multiple products and I think they even had a panda and , and different types of animals besides dogs and cats.

Mike May:

Yeah, my guide dog Johnny was quite interested in it. <laugh> as well as some of the real robots. And there's also another product that's kind of in the same category instead of an animal, let's call it a companion person.

Gena Harper:

When I approached and touched one of these things, it felt like a real human. The eyes, the function has teeth, hair. Andrew is the CEO and he's gonna describe what they're doing here.

Andrew Kiguel:

We're robotics . We make social robots that are meant to interact with people. We don't make robots that replace physical human labor, but we're making robots that really interact with people emotionally. We have the most realistic skin technology in the world and we believe we have the most realistic AI power robots in the world. You can imagine one of our robots wearing a t-shirt. We can program the AI to talk about their business. You can imagine one of our robots at a senior citizen's home keeping company for the people that are residents there. They can talk to them, they can relay information back to a nurse or a doctor.

Gena Harper:

And my mom actually has dementia and she's kind of in love with the few little stuffy animals, but this would be an amazing use case. You could be programmed to identify if you've taken a fall. It's just really cool tactily and I've never seen anything like it. So thank you for the work you're doing in this . Thank

Mike May:

You very much. Yeah, interesting to think how this could be used in in medical environments and social environments. When we walked up to the booth and my guide was trying to describe this to me and she was stumbling, using words like, Hmm , interesting, creepy, spooky. So I reached out to see what it was and I touched what I thought was a human being. So I jerked back. I was not wanting to be that friendly with my neighbor, but in fact it was the face of this , uh, simulated human robot. And it, that skin felt real. It was, it was spooky and creepy and interesting.

Gena Harper:

It does amaze me though, how so many people have called it creepy and spooky because I try to see the more positive side where it might be a stand in for a human in certain situations. And there's so many issues around that, that concept. But I think it's neat that this company's made such progress in how real the robots look and feel.

Mike May:

And my guide described this when we were first walking up. She thought it was a human being. There was a woman with makeup and earrings and from 15 feet away that robot looks like a real person. Now let's go to one of my favorite products. It's an everyday thing in my life of my accessible toolbox items. And that our bone conduction headphones specifically shocks

Gena Harper:

With the Shockz booth with Kim, they just came out with their latest professional product called Open Meat .

Speaker 13:

OpenMeet is the first bone conduction overhead open ear headset. This is a stereo headset That sounds great. It has an amazing microphone and it keeps your ears completely open

Gena Harper:

For the blind folks. The open pump goes around your neck, the open meat goes over the top of your head, like an old fashioned headset. But with the bone conduction,

Guest:

People with vision loss and hearing loss are really, really dear to our hearts because we can make such a difference by allowing the ears to stay open.

Gena Harper:

We love that. Shockz always really focuses on accessibility and deals with people like Mike to...

Guest:

From day one.

Gena Harper:

Yes. Yeah ...To be in touch and it's kind of a together experience. Thank you Kim. Thank you. Uh , this can actually be purchased on amazon.com, the shockz website, Walmart, and the price point is $250.

Mike May:

And when she sat involved with them from day one, she wasn't kidding, it was probably 10 years ago that I experienced my first aftershocks as they were called then. I currently have on a pair of the open com that has a boom mic on the right side, so it's close to your mouth. You get a lot better audio with a microphone close to your mouth as opposed to AirPods or earbuds that have , um, the microphone built into the earpiece. And I typically have these sitting around my neck. They're just there in case I'm going to take a phone call or if I'm using my GPS , I'll put them up on my ears and get the navigation information without blocking my ears. And this has always been a fundamental issue that I've wrestled with over the years as we have so many different audio devices that we're trying to get information from. Not to mention just phone calls and other things you might be using for audio. And I had some very bulky, expensive bone conduction headphones as far back as the early two thousands. And I was always just wishing for the day something would come out and the shocks fulfilled my dream. I was really thrilled. And now with the open Meet headphones, they're addressing another part of the market, which is Zoom calls like this one. And a lot of times people just have their laptop mic or a web com com mic or something that's not very close in their mouth and they sound hollow. And by having a microphone right next to your mouth like you do with the open meet , you can have really good audio. And additionally it comes with a dongle, which helps with the interface. When you're on Zoom, sometimes you have to go pick your microphone and if you change audio devices, it gets confusing. This is turnkey. You just put that little dongle in the USB port, put the headphones on and you're good to go with your audio. With Zoom, with Jaws, with the the whole, the whole equation.

Gena Harper:

And I'm currently using the Aftershockz OpenMeet. The other thing about the shocks company is they're always super receptive to ideas, especially for Mike as he's testing the things for them. And we've had friends come up with ideas and we have shared those ideas with shocks and they have in their next product added those particular features. A big thank you to them. That's a just a great, great thing.

Mike May:

Yeah , I think last year in January, 2024 at CES, we talked about how they could provide more product to the blind community and that evolved into a donation. They were making a transition from aftershocks to shocks with their naming and they had something like 10,000 aftershocks that they were just going to trash. And so they donated those. A PH got a bunch, NFB, other uh , organizations took advantage of those products and distributed them in the field. So hats off to shocks for all they're doing in the past and continue to do in the future in terms of working with the blindness community. So a big rage in the blindness world of course are the RayBan Met glasses and we were quite interested to see what competitive products RayBan has been so successful. You can bet there are a number of other companies trying to get into that space. And here's one that is doing just that with

Gena Harper:

Reuben from Halliday talking about these smart glasses.

Guest:

You can do like prescription lenses on top of it. We have built this tiny screen on top of it. We have like microphones and speakers.

Gena Harper:

What are some of the tasks it can accomplish?

Guest:

Notifications, calendars, reminders and stuff like that. Some light AI functions like AI translation and also audio memo recordings. It does summarizations for you afterwards, but it does something that we call proactive ai. So you know how TG works, you have to like ask something. Yeah , you have to open up an app with this pair of glasses, turn on a standby mode , say we are talking about mirrors and have no idea what mirrors are . Right . And it is gonna pop off information without you having to opening up an app and ask for it

Gena Harper:

If a blind person wanted to use it and they wanted that feature. Some features might require you to look at something, but...

Guest:

The audio , audio friendly audio , it's coming like late March or early April. Regular retail for 180 something.

Gena Harper:

Thank you for working on this and thank you.

Mike May:

You know, it seems interesting. They chose the name Halliday for the glasses and that happens to be the name of a very well known person. The late Jim Halladay who was one of the founders of HumanWare. You notice that he mentioned the glasses have a small screen, which of course the RayBan Metas do not. So there's other things that can be done in terms of perhaps some low vision magnification and other things that can be beneficial with the screen. But then it does create a a little bit heavier device and more expensive. So there's, there's trade offs as there is with all of this technology. One of the navigation components that I've always advocated for is know before you go virtual navigation exploration of the space before you go there. If you can understand where you're going and what something is situated. Like you might not even need a navigation app once you get there. In 1995, <inaudible> launched Atlas Speaks , which was a desktop only app for exploring and you use your arrow keys left, right and forward to go intersection to intersection. Eventually it added a feature with the American Printing House in a version called PC Maps. And that would allow you to go business by business. You could explore down a block. Wouldn't you always wanna know when you're out there with your GPS, every POI that you're passing every business? Well you could do that with Atlas Speaks . So this next product is a modern version of that.

Gena Harper:

Brandon here from XR Navigation. I did a study with him and as a blind person, he creates digital maps.

Brandon Biggs:

XR navigation makes aum , which is the world's first inclusive digital map viewer and editor. So it's fully accessible.

Gena Harper:

How does it actually work, Brandon?

Brandon Biggs:

The visual experience is very similar to what you would expect from a uh , normal visual map, except it allows low vision users to zoom in up to 200%. But that's washing the interface elements are non-visual experience is very similar to a video game where users hear the name and sound of objects as they move a character over them with their arrow keys, touchscreen or other controller if you want to try the demo yourself. We have live demos on our website, so if you're blind you can go to audio audio m.net. Well,

Gena Harper:

Thank you for your work on this, Brandon . I know you've been working on this for years and it's super important that blind people can have their own independence by navigating with maps.

Mike May:

This is a great product. It's one of those tools that you have to invest some time in before you really can maximize the , the benefits of it. It, it takes a little bit of getting used to, but it's worth it. It's still evolving, it's being deployed in college campuses for navigating campus maps. The first time I ever used it, it was to look at a covid map. You may remember that there was a lot of data out there about so many deaths per thousand in this location, in that location and infections, et cetera . And that's a very complicated, visually, it's all color coded. And AUM was able to navigate that , uh, information for me. So it's not just navigation, it's uh , a way of representing visual information in a very useful way.

Gena Harper:

I used to have low vision and I loved maps. I still love maps. I have an embosser to do the T maps and Mike has tons of navigational map tools and I was in a research study with this group and it was as though I could see what one of the features I loved was that it had things in it like a trash can or a park bench or a playground that was amazing. And it was about eight minute sort of tutorial learning how it works. It's essentially like a grid and the grid is numbered with alphabet and and numbers. So you might be at a 52 and then you wanna go up, then you go to a 53 or 54. And so in your mind you just imagine this grid and you start putting points in this grid in your mind and before you know it, you have a beautiful map and you totally understand where it is on the map and how things are relative to each other. And I, I think it's incredible. I I loved it since the day I tried it.

Mike May:

Very cool. So a lot of us have robot vacuums, but picture how robots can be used outside. So for example , uh, a lot of lawnmower companies started coming out at CES in the last couple years and one of the ones that I've been tracking, Yarbo has taken it a step further doing lawn leaf blowing and snow blowing .

Guest:

So this is Yarbo. So it's the world's first yard robot that's actually modular and then we have a lawnmower attachment as well. Basically the way our algorithms work in a spiral pattern from the outside of your yard to the inside and it'll blow everything into a pile.

Gena Harper:

Do we get a robot that picks it up for us and puts in the garbage can and takes it to the curb?

Guest:

We're working actually on all of that. Excellent.

Mike May:

That's your husbands.

Gena Harper:

Oh, that's a husband. How does it know the layout ?

Guest:

You drive it around the perimeter of the driveway. If it's the lawnmower, you're gonna drive it around your yard. You could either use the physical remote if it's more tactile. Yeah . Or you can use a smartphone. I met your husband four years ago and he held a 3D model of a concept that we made. Yeah . Ever since then we decided we were always gonna have 3D models . Cool . If you put your hands out on your right side is

Gena Harper:

The lawnmower. Oh my goodness. Wow. Hey, shout out to other companies. Make 3D models of your products.

Guest:

That's the truth on the lawn, we will go around you people. Pets will go around obstacles, but for the snowblower we stop. If you're within 30 feet of it, Yarborough will resume and it's safe to do so. That is

Gena Harper:

Really exceptional. Thank you guys.

Mike May:

Yeah, I really like the idea of having my Yarbo clearing the snow off the driveway and wondering what the neighbors think when they look out there and this thing's going around. I'm sure it would get lots of attention And lawn mowing the same thing . Just have a , a robot that remembers where everything is. It goes and mows the lawn and it goes back to its charging station. Just like the vacuum. I've tried to encourage them to let me beta test it , but so far that hasn't come about. Should be fun to see in action.

Gena Harper:

And I really love their 3D models. To me it does sort of change things a lot for a blind person to touch a real model of the thing, to have a clear understanding and what a commitment the company has. I mean they, they made all these 3D models ever since they met you, Mike, that that says a lot.

Mike May:

Yeah , it's very cool.

Gena Harper:

We have found human touch, a company that makes this amazing massage chair.

Guest:

This is our Super Novo X. You have these scissor doors open up like a Lamborghini that will make it more accessible for people with mobility issues.

Gena Harper:

Oh we love that. It's squishing my feet.

Guest:

Yeah, it's gonna start providing the massage. You have a button on your left hand side. Okay. You can press that button just once and that'll actually start a program. You press it again, it just shuffles right to the next.

Gena Harper:

And is everything accessible? Like I don't have to use a touchscreen, right?

Guest:

No you do not. There are apps and stuff you can download. There's back intensity controls. Oh you feel the one to the left. One to the right. Uhhuh <affirmative> , Uhhuh <affirmative> . The one to the left is decreasing. The one to the right is increasing. Okay . So the top one is the back, the middle one is the C and the lower one is for leg intensity.

AI Voice:

Mike's sneaky massages G's leg.

Guest:

To pick up the phone.

Gena Harper:

That is a human <laugh> . Yeah,

Guest:

Yeah, exactly

Gena Harper:

Mike. Yeah , it's amazing

Guest:

Isn't it?

Speaker 19:

Alright Gena, are you ready to walk a few

Gena Harper:

More miles? Yes I am. This has been Amazing.

Mike May:

Pretty wonderful when you're covering lots of miles at CES to find a massage chair for a demo. It's, it's the best. And I tried to convince Gena that we should buy one because if she didn't have her Massage Envy massages every couple weeks and if we charged our friends um, $10 each week could probably pay for it.

Gena Harper:

Yeah. Well I also, I have never been impressed with massage chairs. It's never been my thing. This was the most amazing massage chair And then somebody said, well if there was one thing at CES you just had to bring home, what was it? Well the one thing at CES plus Mike last year working on me is we now have a massage chair. It's being delivered soon. I'm very excited and I was really impressed because it calibrates to different people. So every time a new person gets in, if you're a different height. So it is much more focused on the areas of your body where it's gonna work and I cannot wait to see it. And uh, let us know if you wanna pay $10 for a massage.

Mike May:

<laugh> Another thing that keeps coming up every year, different versions of small portable and integrated washers and dryers.

Gena Harper:

We found a really cool washer and dryer combo. They range from 20 pounds for washing and 12 pounds for drying. And there is kind of a small medium large version. One version has an actual knob, which is very helpful to blind people. The most effective way to access these products would be with the Robo Rock app. And they currently have their vacuums in the United States so blind people can check out the app that way. And the washer and dryer are not available yet. Their footprint is small, they're very electric efficient and water efficient. One of the cool things is their small size. So the biggest is about three and a half feet by three and a half feet. And their small one is about one and a half feet by one and a half feet and you could get one to two outfits in there. So that seems really cool.

Mike May:

Right. And we also saw a dishwasher that could go on your counter and it would handle, I think it was three sets of plates or glasses.

Gena Harper:

Very space efficient. Great for small spaces.

Mike May:

And then finally the Inco Thin Heater is something that was kind of interesting since I'm into skiing and lots of people in cold weather might want to have efficient ways of having gloves or jackets. And these plug into your basic iPhone, smartphone battery pack and heat things up.

Gena Harper:

We found this amazing cool booth called Inco and they make printed electronics heating devices and it goes in things like it goes in this jacket. Small version can go in gloves.

Guest:

My name is Alex. We print nanotechnology that our company is patent in the heat can go up to from zero to 600 degrees. We have gloves, socks, mats , pillows, all kind of things

Gena Harper:

For our blind friends. The jacket, it's about one foot by one foot, the printed electronics that do the heating and it's paper thin with a really thin hoard that goes <laugh> . Oops. Just dropped it. They adjust the size of the printed element to match the product. Yeah , it seems like there's so many practical purposes for skiing or if you just have cold weather, they have a blanket that's actually waterproof except where the battery sits. This seems like a fantastic everyday product. Check it out. All the information will be on this post. Thank you so much for allowing us to share all our technology adventures with you. And if you would like to keep up with us and me in particular on more technology adventures as well as all of our travel adventures, you can find me on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube at Gena Blind Woman of Action. And Gena is spelled GENA. You can also reach me at my email address, which is Gena spelled GENA at Gena@Genaharper .com .

Mike May:

Yeah. And we wanna thank the CTA foundation for all of their support and building up the accessibility, even funding five companies each year to go to CES and for the free guides. I mean, it's absolutely amazing to go to a conference and have the capability to see these products and hundreds more with a guide. So our thanks to them , uh, my thanks to to the American Printing House for facilitating , uh, my involvement and some other people , uh, from a PH at Cs and maybe some will chime in and post comments on some of these things that they hear. Lots of cool things you can find out more and follow me more , uh, by going to crashing through.com . And that also has information on a podcast that I do once a month on travel. And of course it includes technology being used for travel. That podcast is called The People Make the Places. And Back to You Sara.

Sara Brown:

Thanks so much Mike and Gena. It was a great job listening to you all discuss the products and really bringing it to life for me and our listeners. And I've put links to many of the products discussed in the podcast, so be sure to check out the show notes. Also, if you have any questions or a podcast topic, send it to me at changemakers@aph.org. As always, be sure to look for ways you can be a change maker this week .