A New Vision For The Future: An IoT Solution To Assist Blind People With Sighted Support
Imagine waking up one morning to find yourself blind after a lifetime of seeing. This scenario became the reality of 35-year-old Eric Burton, an active and ambitious individual who was in the throes of climbing the corporate ladder. Burton was born with a rare degenerative eye disease called Retinitis Pigmentosa, which caused his vision to fade slowly until one day it disappeared altogether, “like a lightbulb switching off,” Burton reflects. He entered a period of darkness, both literally and figuratively, as even the simplest of tasks became daunting to him: leaving the house for a walk, meeting up with friends, ordering food, running errands. Life as he knew it was changed forever.
One day, Burton’s wife Kelly, an AT&T employee, came home bubbling about a phenomenal new partnership between AT&T and a tech firm called Aira that was trying to help blind people “see.” “Seeing” involved using video-enabled sunglasses to connect an Explorer, a blind person, with an Aira Agent, a remote guide who describes surroundings over cellular to help navigate an environment.