What is the name of your organization?
SenseAI
What is the name of your solution?
EyeSight V4
Provide a one-line summary or tagline for your solution.
Innovative affordable technology to empower the visually impaired, bridging the gap between MSVI populations and educational resources using GenAI.
In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?
Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
In what country is your solution team headquartered?
India
What type of organization is your solution team?
Not registered as any organization
Film your elevator pitch.
What specific problem are you solving?
With more than 30 million moderate to severely visually impaired (MSVI) individuals, comprising nearly 11 million children (NPCBVI), India’s educational infrastructure is ill-equipped to meet the scale of the problems. Education typically becomes inaccessible for the majority of MSVI students once they reach high school, adversely affecting employment and quality of life. This is the problem: we need to bridge the gap between the MSVI population and the educational resources they need.
Our research has shown that within the Braille-based frameworks currently available, the extremely low Braille literacy rates (less than 15% worldwide, and less than 1% in India) are a roadblock. Even then, Braille content is quite expensive (typically more than $750 per unit). And even for those who can afford Braille (or users opting for screen-readers) the content is scarce, with less than 1% of educational materials available to MSVI students (WEF).
Existing international solutions are unsuitable for India due to its tremendous diversity in languages and dialects, cultural contexts, and low rates of English literacy in many rural areas (Source: Indian Government). Robotic English-speaking screen readers are hard to interpret and smart canes falter at busy intersections or roadside markets, further contributing to the problem.
What is your solution?
EyeSight V4 provides the visually impaired access to educational resources through a small camera-equipped retrofittable attachment to any pair of glasses, capable of interpreting and explaining the world around it.
EyeSight addresses the lack of a wider ecosystem for conceptual understanding. The inference module, CogniSense, reads out text/diagrams/equations, crafting a user-specific detailed explanation of the concept, from reading out books to describing diagrams. Through real-time conversations with the user, EyeSight doesn’t just say what’s there—it explains what it means—in nearly 40 local languages and dialects. Moreover, the detection module helps out by allowing students to navigate safely and access physical resources, holistically improving the educational experience.
How does it work? Recognizing the ubiquity of smartphone access in large parts of India (around 90%), the glasses come with a simple companion app to run the software, allowing the product to be extremely lightweight (<100 grams) and less than USD 15, still functional despite intermittent connectivity.
Since the features of CogniSense apply to an audience beyond just visually impaired users, we also made it a standalone feature also available via call to all learners, further increasing our reach.
Demo videos of EyeSight/CogniSense: https://www.project-eyesight.org/demos
Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?
It all started when I met Charan at the Premanjali Foundation. Though we immediately started geeking out over math and technology, I gradually began to realize that despite his passion for the subject, he could not actively participate because of a lack of educational resources that enable access to burgeoning advancements in these areas.
We designed EyeSight for individuals like Charan and the 11 million other MSVI individuals in India, whose learning is limited by the availability of resources.
Of these 11 million, the majority cannot access popular solutions due to economic reasons and language barriers, as they speak only local languages. EyeSight’s ability to open up access to content in the language of their choice and at an affordable price seeks to target this demographic.
Through EyeSight, we help improve the technical and conceptual understanding of visually impaired users, as they gain access to more advanced content. Students who were unable to study beyond middle school will be able to access textbooks and finish their schooling. As an everyday wearable, EyeSight also appeals to adult learners, improving productivity, future career prospects, and providing literacy support.
