Biometric assistive technologies developed for visually and hearing impaired

Visual or hearing impairments can create barriers that make it harder to socialize or live independently, but biometric tools show promise in overcoming these barriers. OrCam Hear can help hearing aid users listen to individuals in noisier environments, while HearSight Audio Vision can empower visually impaired users to identify up to 200 faces.

OrCam Hear uses voice biometrics to improve accessibility

OrCam Technologies has announced the introduction of OrCam Hear, a hearing device that uses voice biometrics to isolate and elevate the voices of speakers while removing background noise.

OrCam Hear uses voice signatures to amplify the voices of distinct speakers while removing other voices and ambient noise. The device is a set of earbuds and a mobile phone dongle that can be managed with an app available on iOS.

The app takes a sample of a few seconds of a given voice and creates a voice signature for the speaker, which allows users to isolate and amplify specific voices in noisy environments. Users can turn speakers “on” and “off” through the app, essentially muting other voices and background sounds.

The advancement can promote social inclusion by helping hearing aid users overcome the “cocktail party problem,” where traditional hearing aid users may struggle to understand speech in environments with high background noise, which can lead to avoiding social situations, in turn negatively affecting quality of life.

The device is in a preview phase and is expected to be distributed later in the year.

OrCam previously created another product, MyEye, which uses facial recognition to give visually impaired users the ability to identify who is in front of them. It also allows users to read texts and count paper currency.

The HearSight Audio Vision device can recognize up to 200 faces

A device with similar aims to MyEye, HearSight Audio Vision, was launched at the International Purple Fest in Panaji, India over the weekend. The biometric device can register and subsequently detect up to 200 people’s faces and announce their names when they appear in front of the user.

The device has a number of other features, such as the capacity to identify and describe obstacles within 4-7 feet from the user, as well as the ability to scan multiple India currency notes, read denominations, and calculate total value. It can narrate to users in English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, and other languages.

The device is a set of headphones and processor. The headphones have no battery, do not heat up, and are free from radiation, according to Arun Prakash, one of the device’s developers. The processor is lightweight and has a seven hour battery life. The device’s features are also available offline, giving users access in environments with low internet.

Users can set the device to hands-free mode and control the device through voice commands.

“People with visual impairments had to download several apps for different purposes. Here, we have developed a single device and integrated all the required features into it,” said Timothy Vedanayagam, CEO and MD of the company behind the device, in comments to Times of India. More features will be added to the device in the future.

Purple Fest has become a kind of testing ground for AI-based assistive technology in the B2C sector, which has more ethical considerations than the B2B sector.

The Union department of health research and the Indian Council of Medical Research’s Artificial Intelligence Cell released national guidelines on the use of AI in biomedical research and healthcare in March 2023, designed to guide “effective yet safe development, deployment and adoption of AI-based technologies” in biomedical research and healthcare delivery.

Article Topics

accessibility  |  facial recognition  |  HearSight Audio Vision  |  OrCam Technologies  |  voice biometrics