For many in the visually impaired community, navigating the world with precision and confidence is immensely difficult, and the impact reaches further than we may think. In fact, in some cases, members of the community report feeling intimidated and uncertain as they move through the world around them.

Often, the visually impaired community relies on various tools to assist with navigation, but precious few of those tools have pushed the boundaries of innovation and technology. We knew that in 2022, we could develop something with more utility by harnessing recently accessible tech and the very latest in academic research while partnering with the exact audience we hoped to help.

Eyedar is the first app that teaches the blind to visualize their world with sound. It was inspired by echolocation—a form of sensory substitution where the blind use the sense of hearing to visualize their surroundings. Only 1% of the blind population can actively echolocate, and the skill takes years of practice to master.

Eyedar digitizes the principles of echolocation, making it an accessible and learnable skill. By leveraging the newly available LiDAR 3D technology in iPhones, Eyedar maps a user’s environment and translates it into 3D audio data, allowing the blind to visualize their surroundings.

By emitting a LiDAR signal, Eyedar generates a 3D-map of the space around the user. A 100-point vertical line array sweeps from left to right across the LiDAR field, and each point is assigned a pitch tone from low to high, bottom to top. As the line sweeps the field, each point emits its assigned tone, with higher (close) or lower (distant) volume depending on proximity to the user. The result is, to the untrained ear, a lot of noise. But with practice and training, the mind becomes accustomed to the noise, patterns begin to emerge, and a clearer mental picture of the world is achievable.

Several prior fMRI studies have shown that with visual-audio sensory substitution, and with echolocation specifically, the brain’s visual cortex processes the information, leading to a “vision-like experience” in practitioners of echolocation.

To help users master the skill, Eyedar provides sequential training, beginning with basic sound and obstacle recognition and progressively challenging users to visualize more complex soundscapes and navigate with greater confidence. Over time, the process is designed to become second nature, allowing users to build a clearer picture of the world around them.

Our blind-led UX team built the app with universal best practices of accessibility design and took a blind-first approach to design. As such, this meant doing away with a visual interface. Instead, the navigation exclusively uses voiceover and gestures to allow users to use the Eyedar app with ease.

After building out the app, we conducted beta testing with a diverse group of visually impaired users. They put Eyedar’s interface and functionality to the test in a variety of environments and use cases, from shopping to general navigation, indoors and outdoors. Their feedback informed modifications and optimizations to the app.

To ensure Eyedar is accessible to the blind community regardless of location or situation, we made the app free to download. The Eyedar codebase was also released under an MIT open-source license on GitHub, making it available for continued innovation and customization for the blind community.

Eyedar launched in April of 2022. Its potential has only just begun. With nearly
50 million blind people in the world, smartphone usage near-ubiquitous, and LiDAR and other computer vision technology increasingly available, Eyedar can reach an unprecedented proportion of the blind community to make echolocation a learnable and accessible skill.

Horizon Therapeutics - Eyedar

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