Sept. 18, 2020 — Lighthouse Guild has launched a new podcast series, “On Tech & Vision with Dr. Cal Roberts,” designed to provide information and insights about technological innovations that are tearing down barriers for people who are blind or visually impaired.
"We are now seeing incredible innovations in areas like spatial orientation and artificial intelligence that can help people with vision loss live even more productive and independent lives,” says Lighthouse Guild President and CEO, Calvin W. Roberts, M.D. “Lighthouse Guild is pleased to be a connecting rod between evolving technology and the people that can benefit from it.”
Topics for the first three episodes of the series are:
- Episode 1: Seeing with Your Ears – Translating the Audio World to Visual – how using audio can connect people with vision loss to the world around them. Dr. Roberts speaks with Dr. Yonatan Wexler about the OrCam MyEye device, which uses audio technology for this purpose. They also discuss whether the brain can recreate a picture using sound alone and what benefits and challenges developers face when using sound as a substitute sense for sight.
- Episode 2: A Tech Revolution in Your Hand – how using touch and sound together can create spatial awareness through the use of smart canes. Dr. Roberts speaks to entrepreneur Kürşat Ceylan, who developed the WeWALK, a white cane enabled with smart technologies, for people who are blind.
- Episode 3: A “Remapped Reality” – Using Virtual Reality to Remap the Visual Field – how virtual reality (VR) is used to remap sight for people with vision loss. Dr. Roberts visits with Frank Werblin, Ph.D., to talk about how combining a smartphone and VR headset to modulate the visual field can help people see better. Dr. Werblin shares how his device, IrisVision, incorporates this technology that not only remaps vision, but leads to renewed social connections for people with vision impairment.
The podcast is available is available online at Lighthouseguild.org and via Apple Music, Spotify, Google Podcasts and Tunein.com.