Welcome And What We Cover

Kevin 0:00

Welcome to our podcast When Life Gives You Lemons. I'm Kevin.

palmi 0:06

And I'm Palmi. We consider ourselves disability advocates and intend to highlight some disability issues and things we find interesting that we frequently encounter when we're out and about. Also, some history on disability that we find interesting. This year we're going to include more of the interviews of the people that the disability affects. We hope you enjoy it.

Speaker 0:32

Another

A Poem On Adaptation

Speaker 0:33

day in a room is not built for me. The sidewalk flows at a different speed. Feels like I'm watching my own movie through a hazy sunlit filter. All the little signs are invisible lines that only make sense in my own time. There's a quiet strength in adaptation, a soft hum of my own creation. Yeah, soft hum of my own creation.

palmi 1:06

Welcome

AI Glasses And The Sixth Sense

palmi 1:07

back to our podcast when life gives you lemons. I'm Kevin. And I'm Palmi.

Kevin 1:15

And today's episode we're gonna be talking about using uh AI augmented glasses to assist with uh blind mobility.

palmi 1:29

I love your title, The Sixth Sense. Beyond Sight, how modern tech is rewriting accessibility.

Kevin 1:39

Yeah, they really doesn't have anything to do with me. That's uh AI have you poking a bit of fund at me.

palmi 1:48

Ah okay. Uh we're we're gonna explore tools, hacks, and systems uh reshaping independence for disability the disability community. If you're listening with a screen reader reader running in the background, headphones hooked up via the bone conduction, while navigating commuting, today's episode is built for you. We're diving deep into the rapid rpid evolving ecosystem of assisted technology for the blind and low vision community. We aren't just talking about basic screens, uh magni magnifers today. We're unpacking AI scene descriptures, real-time spathic navigation, sptial sptial navigation and technical interface and the practical setups, blind creators, professional, and students use every day that students use every day to navigate a world built for eyes.

Screen Readers Meet Context Awareness

palmi 3:03

For decades, the bedrock of digital independence has been the screen reader. Whether you grow up mastering Jaws keyboard commands on bulky desktop or rely on Nvidia for open source flexibility or navigate iOS with voiceover gestures. Screen reader remains our center command structure. Is contextual awareness. Traditional screen readers reads text labels and code tags, but the web is messy. Devolvers today frequently forget alt text or label interactor checkout button simply is button zero four. Today on device learning modules dynamically parse the DOM tree in unlabeled images. Okay, what they mean by some of this stuff is the images usually have what's called geocodes or geotags in them, and they don't rely on geotags necessarily. Same for all texts, it's the uh part where you can um label something with some text, and then add for example, add additional explanations is required. For example, like uh in the case that we're building here, you're looking at say an image, okay. Um traditional or older geotags will tell you, like where is the big thing that picture was taken, which really doesn't, you know, give a lot of context to it. Whereas in the alt text, it's a little bit more descriptive, it will have let's say a caption under a photograph, and the alt text will be coded to say where the mouse goes over that, or the screen reader goes over that, it will you know provide additional descriptions. Say we took a picture of a wheel siding tour on an ocean, so the alt text would rely on someone to type something in, type correctly identified the ocean or the species of wheel, or perhaps the uh uh outing uh enterprise that runs that particular boat and where it's located, all those things would have to be input by the user, whereas nowadays AI can just describe the scene without it, automatically looks at like things like geotags and alt text. And if there is no, for example, alt text, it would be recommend a couple. And yeah, if it works out well, you can integrate that into a uh uh typically a web page or something like that. You intend to have uh audience that needs a bit more description than just that little simple caption you have.

Kevin 7:28

So I gave an example of a photograph of a wooden dining room table with a laptop and a mug on the right and a bright morning light. So it's more descriptive than just a laptop on the table with a mug.

palmi 7:44

Yeah, it's also if you uh kind of analyze that sentence of how Bombie just described it, it's kind of like a prompt for AI. If you go to one that's produces images, that would be the way you describe it.

Kevin 8:06

If you wanted something to come up like that. Exactly.

palmi 8:09

Otherwise, you're just everything you're not describing, you're kind of leaving the AI to its own devices to create. And you wanted to create the image the way you want it to look. As specific as you want it. Yeah, you mean he did even more specific. It really depends a lot on what sort of AI you're using. Uh they've done a lot in the past year to where it's a lot easier, closer to plain luggage, but a lot of image creating in AI, you can also edit. So if they come out with something that you didn't address in the prompt, or you just wanted to say move the mug on the table from one side to the other, you just say, okay, move the mug from the right side to the left side. But this is with um in the glasses, so it's trying to get it as specifically as it as it can based on what it's seeing.

Kevin 9:20

Right.

palmi 9:21

With uh well, we'll get we'll get into the specifics of glasses a little bit later.

Kevin 9:29

Okay, so

Scene Descriptions And Safety Rules

Kevin 9:30

let's go on. Now let's look at the physical world. For years, identifying whether a can in your pantry was a diced tomato or a kidney bean meant either keeping Braille labels using a RF uh barcode wand or playing kitchen roulette. Today, camera-based assistance tools fall into two game changing categories the multi-model AL describer. Instead of just reading the flat OCR label, you can take a snapshot and ask the following questions in a neutral speech. You can ask, read the cooking instructions, but skip the microwave step and tell me the oven temperature, or scan your hallway and ask, are there any shoes left in my walking path? Uh live human in-loop site assistance. When absolutely precise is the mission is mission critical, like reading a home pregnancy test, settings and settings and unfamiliar thermostat dial in a hotel room or navigating an airport terminal gate changes, tapping into live site agents or volunteers bridges the gap with zero algorithm um hallucinations. But remember, AI is a the golden rule with AI is it's an advisor, not a guide dog. Never rely solely on the AI camera feed to cross a street or confirm whether a crosswalk signal has changed. Redundancy and white cane or guide dog fundamentals always come first.

palmi 11:16

They're more reliable. AI does make mistakes, it's usually not. And it's new technology, so it's learning technology and AI has the ability to learn. But it's generally not gonna say walk when you shouldn't walk. But it can make mistakes like um mistaking the sound for walk that crosswalks usually play. It could be the other crosswalk going the other direction that uh it's mistaken for the one that comes from your direction.

Be My AI Versus Be My Eyes

palmi 12:02

So before and before we go further, we should mention some of these uh apps that are available on smartphones because that does come into this later on. Um okay now bear in mind that I let's see. Let me find some with I in it. Be my eyes. That's the live human in loop.

Kevin 12:34

That's not AI, which sounds a lot like I. So uh these are the apps that you'd use that do not use AI.

palmi 12:48

But they're linked based through the glasses. These are apps you can use through the glasses.

Kevin 12:53

No, that is what the developers hope to get to. Oh, I see. But it's important, that's why it's important you know based on some of these. What some of these apps are. I mean, you can pretty much tell what they're designed to do by by their name. So one's be my AI and the other one's be my eyes.

palmi 13:19

Correct.

Kevin 13:20

Okay.

palmi 13:22

Uh first we're going to talk about B MyAI.

Kevin 13:27

And that was the one seeing AI. And that was the one where you can um scan the label and ask for how the cooking instructions are, what the cooking instructions are. Correct. Okay.

palmi 13:40

And uh later on we uh mentioned also be my eyes, which is what helps you navigate by finding uh building address numbers. And actually talking to a human, actually taking yeah, directions from human, or you can snap a photo of where a building should be when you're following navigational instructions, and those instructions are telling you you should be at your destination. You take a picture with your smartphone, they'll tell you there's an address, building number on there. Say you're looking for building 300, it will say building 300. And if you were to have a uh street sign in that photo somewhere, it would read what street you're on.

Kevin 14:43

I see.

palmi 14:44

Okay, like I said before, the developers of the software that have been around for years, they can be used on smartphones, they want to get to where they work with AI. The idea is to get the AI augmented glasses to communicate with your smartphone, usually by Bluetooth, because though uh Bluetooth has its own code and it affords you a little bit of privacy, and I'm just gonna say that everything you share is not gonna be shareable to the public, perhaps.

Wayfinding Outdoors And Indoors

palmi 15:39

Okay, let's talk about mobility, wearable, and wayfinding.

Kevin 15:46

Okay, we're gonna talk, yeah. Uh see uh skip over that name because we're not there, but okay, when uh you're getting ready for an outs or outside adventure or excursion, uh the apps that you're using are you know good. When you're using the uh glasses for I'm gonna use an example here, is brand names. I'm not recommending that brand name. As a matter of fact, it seems like the AI glasses are like introducing their uh 2026 models at the moment. I'm sure there'll be updates to these how they operate and things like that. So it's kind of useless for me to detail each and every bit of glasses except for obvious differences. For example, Google glasses are not gonna win any fashionable awards, they're just plain plexiglass glasses. Whereas uh Beta has already introduced theirs, which are plain black rimmed plexiglass glasses.

palmi 17:22

I saw Ray Bans and they were really nice.

Kevin 17:25

They they partnered with the cup company Ray Bans They're really stylish, big Ray Bans uh sunglasses, and yes, she can't choose things that look a little bit more stylish than just black plastic-looking glasses.

palmi 17:49

Exactly. What were they called in the military?

Kevin 17:53

Uh no, it's another joke. I'm not sure it's suitable for all ages. Okay. I'll put it out there though. I mean so getting from point A to point B is often where the most um cognitive load happens. Standard mapping apps like Google and Apple Maps are designed for drivers in 200 feet, turn left. But for blind part um walkers, 200 feet doesn't tell you where the curb cuts are or where the construction um stru uh block uh stifle. What is that word? Curb cut and sh staffing scaffolding blocks the sidewalk or which side of the street the bus shelter sits on. So here's where the accessibility um where wayfinders is these are apps in the glasses that uh allows you to do that kind of thing from the glasses. Go ahead with the names then. Okay, Lazzarello and Blind Square. I can't help but think Lazzarello is a name. So these might be it. Brand names.

palmi 19:10

Brand names are connected to brand names. Uh and you know, obviously there'll be uh uh say with uh iPhones the yeah, Apple probably came out with not upcharged your uh yeah, I'm sure Apple's product will cost more than the rest, but uh I think Apple may have their own AI glasses. Well, good uh Samsung on the Android side also is kind of like uh the Apple of Android, they tend to be a little bit more pricier. These are these brands that he just mentioned, these are GPS and OpenStreetMap data to give you 360-degree point of interest announcements as you walk. And so the next ones are Kev Good Maps and Clue.

Kevin 20:14

These are tracking indoor navigation, the final frontier using LIDAR and Bluetooth beckon um beacons. They guide you down indoor corridors directly to specific room doors and or and or um elevators.

Bone Conduction Audio For Awareness

palmi 20:32

And the next one Smart Wear Bulls and bone conduction.

Kevin 20:39

A major safety breakthrough just isn't just the software, it's the hardware. Bone conduction headphones like short shocks transmit audio through your cheekbones, leaving your ear canals completely unobstructed. This ensures you never lose situational unawareness, such as traffic noises or echolocation clues from your cane while listening to turn-by-turn navigations.

palmi 21:14

Yeah.

Kevin 21:15

S-H-O-K-Z.

palmi 21:17

Modern urban style. So, yeah, it just you see that for the first time, I'm sure it throws you for a loop. But the uh the basically if you don't those aren't brand names. Mug conduction, it's been around for years.

Kevin 21:38

No, I meant the shocks. Is that a brand name?

palmi 21:42

No, yeah, shocks is brand name, I'm sure. Anyway, bone conduction has been around for well they have that in normal hear uh audio equipment now. Yeah, it's instead of using your ears to hear, it's like radiation. Through your chin bone. Through your chin bone to get your ear bones. Everybody forgot you have bones in your ear, but yeah.

Kevin 22:10

You like those better than regular earphones.

palmi 22:13

Well, the for example, uh the same give here, you can hear outside noise as well. Yeah, you like military used bone conduction uh microphones. The same reason you can hear what's going on on the radio.

Kevin 22:34

Yeah.

palmi 22:35

Well, but it's not blocking out the your surroundings, noises around you. Yeah.

Braille Tech And Tactile Graphics

Kevin 22:43

Okay, so we're talking about tact tactical tactical tact tactical feedback and future of the braille. So before we wrap up, we want to talk about tact tactical technology. Some people assume speech. Um syndicators will re replace Braille, but Braille literally is directly correlated with higher employment and educational attainments. The problem is historically been hardware costs and page limits, the single-line 14 or 40 cell display. Now multi-line technical technical graphics display like the dot pad or the monarch are emerging. These devices render not just text, but technical diagrams, math grams, and geographic maps as a full grid of dynamic pins. A blind STEM student can now feel a sin wave or impact an astronomical diagram in real life without waiting for weeks for specialized swell paper prints.

palmi 24:03

And I want to make one little uh correction of Palmi's uh pronunciation. It's not tactical, it's tactile. Tactile, sorry. In other words, your senses you feel right like borders and braille. Yeah. Uh okay. Again, the uh if you watch the DOs, they will compare uh the models are coming out now and uh compare them to uh the software you use on smartphones presently. And the bottom line on almost every video I've seen is if you want a hand-free experience, for example, you want to be able to listen to music you have stored on your iPhone, it will play through speakers on your glasses, and you can um uh have a funky strut as you walk down the sidewalk or something like that. Okay, and yeah, uh if that is worthwhile to you, yes, it's worth buying smart classes. Uh as far as if it's not worthwhile to you, uh you may want to wait and see specific models and how they interact with some of the software that's already on your smartphone.

Kevin 25:51

Yeah.

Beyond Glasses And Neuralink Talk

Kevin 25:52

They're not saying that the technology is going to cure blindness. Uh they're just saying that some of the apps that come with the glasses will uh add some additional um help in order to be able to to uh and not um live your surroundings without without some uh additional obstacles.

palmi 26:16

Yeah, one thing I'm really surprised that he didn't mention here, Palmi, was uh the eye that uh Neuralink made. Um, I don't want to um well, it's two different things.

Kevin 26:43

These are glasses.

palmi 26:44

We're talking glasses. We're talking glasses that you can buy cheap, and I'm pretty sure.

Kevin 26:51

They're not cheap. They're not cheap.

palmi 26:52

I'm pretty sure. Well, as compared to what you'd pay for a whole lot.

Kevin 26:59

Surgery, yeah. Okay, but right now, again, I said this before and I'll say it again. Uh Dr. Link is conducting trials, they're still working the bugs out of this stuff. So uh of course, what they eventually are going for is something that you would see. For example, if you're a fan of Star Trek, Star Trek, the next generation, GeorgulaForge, the blind engineer, had a visor, and he could see different light spectrums, they're going for that while using challenging. Uh basically instead of a glass eye, that is a whole ball of technology that fits in your eye socket. But uh again, they're not there, and right now I believe the last update I've seen is you can see like uh a logographic image of what is actually there. Not super worth the money, but uh as again, trails usually you mean they're free, so hey and of course that they usually uh they update their stuff remotely, so not like you had to visit the clinic every time you need an upgrade. Uh it's uh works with the brain computer interface they've already applied it in your skull. And uh I'm not gonna go into great detail because we're not here to talk about Neuralink, but I'm surprised it didn't uh mention it as maybe an option, you know.

Listener Question On Must Have Tech

palmi 29:13

Some kind of app that connects to it. Okay, so I've got a question for listeners this week. What is the piece of uh assisted technology hardware or apps or clever um um techno um automation that you refuse to leave home without?

Kevin 29:35

And what I want to do is open this up to everybody who's disabled. Right. Because obviously, if you're not blind, you're probably not using apps me for the blind to navigate using their smartphones.

palmi 29:55

So I have that question to you, Kev. What would you what do you what technology uh or hardware or app do you not want to live without?

Kevin 30:04

Actually, it's I'm living with that and I'm waiting for it to come. Okay, the uh Palmi showed me the other day a uh backup camera that's less cumbersome than the one I have. But it doesn't work with his wheelchair because I don't have one.

palmi 30:25

So he has a wheel, he has a wheelchair that has a backup camera currently, but it sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.

Kevin 30:33

It's unique to this manufacturer's design. And they just kind of they just ringed up, yeah. They join ringed it up, so they didn't really think it through it well, and it sticks out about a foot away from the back of his chair.

palmi 30:49

So every time he bumps it, comes too close to a wall, somebody tries to too close come too close behind him, it kinks it. And that horse kinks all the wires behind it and uh causes it to malfunction. They up did an upgrade where he can adjust it. You make it so you can have a fun time no matter what kind of ground you're with. It goes upside down sometimes. He said when he looks in the back and it and everything's upside down, it's a totally different world for him. Backwards and upside down.

Kevin 31:25

Furniture of the ceiling. Yeah, so all right. So we're curious what is what is the hardware or the app or what is it that you might want to have or that you have that you wouldn't didn't want you would not want to be without. So he would like his camera to actually work.

palmi 31:44

Well, yeah, it's uh even actually work. I mean, they put a display here that I can see, but it's on the uh controller side, whereas this shows up, it runs up via conduit. The new one I showed you next to yeah, connects to the base of your realtor right and comes through your and then shows on your phone. The wire goes up through a conduit and plugs into a USB port, which I don't have on my realtor. And it scans through his through his onto his phone, so he doesn't even have to have a separate screen. Because the other part that doesn't work is sometimes the screen just doesn't work, it just goes blank on you.

Kevin 32:35

And that's because the wires are kinked or something. But not I'm regretting because uh sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. This display is like time-oriented. I wanted to fix it so it wasn't like cutting out after 20 seconds or whatever the timeout on it is, right? Because there's an awful lot to do. Get turned around. Okay, yeah, when I'm adjusting the back of the camera in the back, I have to get turned around and then take a quick glance at the screen. Hopefully, I made it before it times out and turns off, and I can see if it's outside or cock to the left or the right, or perhaps not point it down correctly, stuff like that. But anyway, if you would please, you can get a hold of us for that feedback either by leaving a comment on our Facebook page, or I'll put uh a poll up on X later on in the week. Or face or a Facebook page. Or email. Yeah, I've yeah, I I've never done a poll on Facebook, but I've seen other people have done it, so I know it's possible. I'll give that a me and I come out looking right, but it'll be there by the end of the week. That'll give a couple days for people to actually uh have listened to this episode.

Scheduling Break And Moving Plans

palmi 34:26

And uh uh since I said episode, we're gonna go into the uh the next uh a little bit of housekeeping before next episode. As you probably know, so we're in season four now. So you probably know they're drill, but in case you don't, I'm gonna clue in right around Thanksgiving, American. Uh I say that because Canadians have a Thanksgiving. That's a different date.

Kevin 35:02

We you know we take off for the year.

palmi 35:05

We take off for the year because that's when we have family gatherings and all this stuff. Until after the new year we start again.

Kevin 35:14

But I think this year we're gonna start, we're gonna stop in November 1st, because we are actually moving, and November is gonna be our move date. So I think November we'll do one more episode in October, but then November after November it's gonna be our last one until the first of the year. Okay, so you're primarily saying I'll get the exact date for you the next episode.

palmi 35:45

Yep. Because our move is tentatively the first and second, and I can't see the can't see us getting trying to get a podcast in there with the new house.

Kevin 35:55

We have to uh get ruined that we had set up like this when where there is no echo, and we're not gonna be interrupted by other noise and such leaking into it. And it may take us uh a day or two to figure out what day or two. It might take us a week or two.

palmi 36:18

A week or two. It's gonna take us a month at least. It might take us a month or two. It may take a few months.

Kevin 36:24

Hopefully, it's gonna not take longer, otherwise it's just gonna have to be. Well, let's try the stroom for this episode.

palmi 36:35

It was the one not doing work, you can tell.

Kevin 36:38

If it works great, we'll move on to a next episode and use the same place. But anyway, uh just so you know that break is coming up.

palmi 36:51

And probably the first of November instead of the end of November, like before.

Kevin 36:56

Yeah. Uh we actually have closing dates in October, and we have other commitments that are tied to those that are coming up, they will absorb the early parts of November. We can record episodes in advance so that those won't uh uh affect the schedule of when we're doing it, but we don't want to have to like try to frantically dig out podcasting equipment, figure out where we can get up and all get you know, we're zoomed from there. We just like to stay. If we record too far ahead of time, of course, there's something noteworthy needs to be talked about. We don't we have that ability anymore. So we want to limit two episodes where we recorded events to one or two, and that way if there's a big breakthrough somewhere involving disability, we can talk about that in a timely manner, not like a month after it happens.

Final Sign Off

Kevin 38:20

Okay. Until next time. When life gives you lemons, what do you do?

palmi 38:27

Make your lemonade.

Kevin 38:29

Till next time, folks.