Brera becomes more accessible: Meta AI Glasses are coming for blind and visually impaired people

With more training, the models become more accurate: the more feedback they receive, the better they get. You’re right, it’s a constant process of improvement. Fortunately, it’s not the only thing people have to rely on: it’s one of the tools they have at their disposal to find out information.

In the first version of the Ray-Ban Meta, there was an option to request a description: ‘What’s in front of me?’. For a blind or visually impaired person, this is essential: when I walk into a room, tell me where I am and what’s in front of me. And the AI would describe the room. The feedback we received whilst working with blind and visually impaired people was that this wasn’t enough: it wasn’t detailed enough. Now you can get detailed descriptions: the AI no longer just tells you that you’re in a room with three people; it tells you that the room is green, that there are six sofas, how many people are there, what’s on the right and what’s on the left. And it’s an option you can switch on or off: if you don’t want the details, you won’t get them.

I don’t think anyone would ever argue that, for their own personal safety, they should rely on just one aid. Glasses – and the AI in them – are designed as an additional aid. They will not replace the white cane or the guide dog, which people have been using for a long time to get about safely. Can they tell you that there’s a low railing in front of you and that you’d bump your head if you carried on walking? Of course, and that’s an extra bit of help. But I wouldn’t say it’s something people should rely on 100 per cent for their own safety.

Yes, we carry out what are known as co-design projects, in which we design and develop the product together with the users. This year alone, I believe, we’ve carried them out in five countries, involving people who are blind or partially sighted, as well as those who are deaf, have physical disabilities or suffer from memory loss. And we’ve found that people with disabilities use the AI in the glasses far more than people without disabilities.

In all three of these categories, there have been improvements even compared to just six months ago. Battery life was a frequent complaint, because if you’re blind, you want to wear the glasses all the time. It’s not a gimmick, it’s not a gadget. We’ve improved the battery life significantly, but people would like it to work 24 hours a day, and we haven’t quite got there yet. The latency isn’t zero, but it’s become really very good: the response feels almost instantaneous. And whilst the accuracy isn’t 100 per cent either, it’s improving. People want 24-hour battery life, zero latency and 100 per cent accuracy. All these aspects are improving, but they’re not perfect yet.

Glasses don’t just help you make sense of your surroundings; they give the wearer a level of privacy they didn’t have before. I’m thinking, for example, of medical reports. Recently, a blind woman told me: ‘Imagine taking a pregnancy test and having to ask someone else to tell you the result. Now, thanks to the glasses, she can do it herself. Then there’s the issue you raise, namely filming other people. Mobile phones are constantly filming and taking photos, and you don’t know it, because there’s no way of telling when someone’s pointing one at you. The glasses, like a mobile phone, can record, but we’ve built in specific privacy features: a flashing LED light indicates when a photo is being taken or a video is being recorded. And if you try to cover it, they stop working. Recently, I was trying to read a text and had brought it so close to the lens that the glasses thought I was trying to cover it. I hadn’t even touched it, yet they told me: ‘Power off, it won’t work’.

In workshops and co-design sessions, I often hear people say that the glasses help them build self-confidence. I didn’t expect this, and we’ll learn from them exactly what it means in practice. I’ve been working in the tech sector for 13 years and I’ve never heard such overwhelmingly positive feedback about a product as I have about these glasses, and about how they radically change the way people can live their lives. I think we tend to forget just how large the population with disabilities is. They’re seen as a minority, people on the margins. But 16 per cent of the world’s population has a disability. In some countries, such as the United States, it’s one in four adults. And if we live long enough, 100 per cent of us will have a disability.

I’d say not: it’s a more inclusive interpretation. We’re getting closer to being able to serve everyone. Technology is often designed in a way that doesn’t meet the needs of those on the margins. With these glasses, right from the start, we’ve consciously thought about these people. When we think about what a disability is, we tend to think of a permanent disability, but we all experience situational disabilities too. When the light dims, even though I’m neither blind nor visually impaired, I might need assistance. When I’m in a noisy place, I can’t hear very well. The Ray-Ban Meta glasses we use at Brera are designed for blind and visually impaired people, who receive information in audio form. But we also have models with displays, which can compensate for a deaf person by showing them what they cannot hear. Designing this feature has meant that I, too, can read my speeches on the lens: there’s a little bump on the glasses, because once you have the technology for transcription, what else can you use it for? Designing for a deaf person has created a better product for everyone. And I can tell you that every politician I know who’s heard about them has contacted me saying they want to try them out.