Seeing with Your Ears: Translating the Visual World to Audio

<p><em><span style="font-weight: 200;">This podcast is about big ideas on how technology is making life better for people with vision loss.</span></em></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 200;">Today’s big idea is seeing with your ears — exploring technology that uses audio to connect people with vision loss to the world around them. Dr. Cal Roberts speaks with Dr. Yonatan Wexler about the OrCam My Eye device. They explore the ideas of whether the brain can recreate a picture using audio alone, how well hearing can replace lost sight, and what are the discovery processes for using audio description technology as a substitute for vision.</span></p> <p><strong>The Big Takeaways:</strong></p> <ul> <li style="font-weight: 200;"><span style= "font-weight: 200;">Developments in technology allow for the use of audio as a substitute for vision for people with no or low vision, sending signals to the brain to create a picture in their mind’s eye.</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 200;"><span style="font-weight: 200;">The natural gesture of pointing signals the OrCam device to enable audio feedback to the wearer, the same way our selective vision helps us discriminate objects from our surroundings.</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 200;"><span style="font-weight: 200;">The journey to the development of this device was intricate and involved, highlighting the constant evolution of this technology and future opportunities for development such as the ability for a user to save their experiences.</span></li> </ul> <p><strong>Tweetables:</strong></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 200;">“I have an idea of how the ball field is shaped, where the players are standing, and what they do. … It’s not a fully-fleshed out picture, but it … helps me know what everyone is doing at any … moment.” — Karen, a blind baseball fan describing hearing a game play-by-play</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 200;">“A radio allows you to use your imagination. In some ways, radio is even better.”</span> <span style="font-weight: 200;"><br /></spa