Assistive Technology Roundup: April 2025 Update

FAFTB Blog Header - Technology Update April 2025

First Aid for the Blind knows the value of assistive technology for the blind and visually impaired community. That's why we stay up-to-date on AI, apps, and devices that can help those without sight. Continue reading for some of our latest insights.

Alexa+

Amazon has launched Alexa+ (Alexa Plus), an advanced iteration of its voice assistant, designed to offer more natural interactions, personalized assistance, and enhanced capabilities. Alexa+ represents Amazon's next-generation voice assistant, powered by advanced generative AI. This upgrade enables Alexa to understand and process natural language more effectively, facilitating more fluid and human-like conversations. Unlike the standard Alexa, which typically handles one request at a time, Alexa+ can engage in multi-turn dialogues, allowing for more dynamic and context-aware interactions. Importantly, Alexa+ is an optional premium service that users can choose to enable on their compatible devices, offering an enhanced experience beyond the traditional Alexa functionalities.

Here are some details about Alexa+:

1. More Natural Conversations: Alexa+ is engineered to interpret casual speech and context, allowing users to communicate more naturally without adhering to specific command structures. It can maintain context across multiple interactions, enabling follow-up questions without the need for repetition. For example, after asking about the weather, a user can inquire, "What about the weekend?" and Alexa+ will understand the reference to weather forecasts for the upcoming weekend.

2. Personalized Assistance: With the ability to learn and remember user preferences (with permission), Alexa+ offers a more tailored experience. It can store information such as dietary restrictions, favorite music genres, and daily routines, and it can use this data to provide customized responses and suggestions. For instance, when asked for dinner ideas, Alexa+ can recommend recipes that align with the user's dietary needs and past preferences.

3. Advanced Task Handling: Alexa+ functions as a more capable virtual assistant, managing complex or multi-step tasks through voice commands. Users can request Alexa+ to plan events, create study schedules, coordinate travel arrangements, and more. For example, it can book a restaurant reservation, schedule a ride, and send invitations—all initiated through a single voice request.

4. Deeper Smart Home Integration: Alexa+ enhances smart home management by integrating more deeply with connected devices. It can analyze video feeds from security cameras, summarize daily activities, and provide detailed reports. For example, users can ask, "Did the dog get walked today?" and Alexa+ can review footage from connected cameras to provide an answer. Additionally, setting up complex smart home routines becomes more straightforward, as Alexa+ can guide users through the process using voice prompts.

5. Information Summarization and Learning: Leveraging generative AI, Alexa+ can act as a research assistant, summarizing documents, extracting key information, and providing detailed explanations on a wide range of topics. Users can share documents, emails, or other content with Alexa+ and request summaries or specific information, making it a valuable tool for quickly accessing essential details.

6. Tone and Personality: Alexa+ is designed to detect the user's tone of voice and respond with appropriate nuance. If a user sounds frustrated or upset, Alexa+ can adjust its responses to be more empathetic and supportive, creating a more personalized and engaging interaction.

Alexa+ will be free for Amazon Prime members, or $19.99 per month for nonmembers. The initial rollout, which just began recently, prioritizes owners of Echo Show devices, specifically models 8, 10, 15, and the newly announced 21. Following this early access phase, Alexa+ will become available on additional Echo devices in subsequent months. Some older Echo models, such as the first-generation Echo, Echo Dot, Echo Plus, Echo Tap, and the first-generation Echo Spot, will not support Alexa+ due to hardware limitations. However, these devices will continue to function with the standard Alexa features. For users without a compatible Echo device, Alexa+ will also be accessible via the Alexa mobile app and a new web-based interface, allowing for a seamless experience across different platforms.

Alexa is a common tool for blind folks, so these developments hold significant promise for individuals who are blind or have low vision, as it aims to further enhance accessibility and usability.

PiccyBot – Image and Video Description

PiccyBot is an advanced accessibility application for iOS designed to bring greater independence to blind and visually impaired users by providing detailed descriptions of photos and videos. Utilizing AI, PiccyBot converts visual content into spoken narratives, making digital media more accessible. Users can take or select a photo, and PiccyBot will describe objects, people, colors, and spatial arrangements. For videos, it provides narration that explains actions, objects, and scene changes, making video content more accessible.

PiccyBot allows users to share generated descriptions via text message, email, or social media. This feature is helpful for confirming details with sighted friends, collaborating on visual content, or sharing experiences inclusively. Users can forward detailed descriptions of images or videos, ensuring accessibility extends beyond individual use.

Additionally, PiccyBot allows users to ask specific questions about a processed image or video. For example, users can inquire about the number of people in a picture or the presence of specific objects. This interactive approach enhances accessibility, allowing users to refine the information they receive and navigate visual content more effectively.

PiccyBot offers options to customize voice speed, tone, and duration, ensuring an optimal listening experience. Users can save and revisit descriptions, making it easy to reference visual information multiple times. This is especially useful for reviewing personal photos, documents, or complex video content.

While PiccyBot provides essential functions for free, upgrading to the premium version unlocks benefits like an ad-free experience, extended video processing, and greater control over description formatting and sharing. Premium users can analyze longer videos, making it easier to access instructional content, movie scenes, or personal video messages.

Overall, PiccyBot is a significant advancement in digital accessibility, enabling blind users to engage with visual content independently. By providing AI-driven descriptions and seamless sharing options, it enhances accessibility across various aspects of life, including social media, education, and entertainment.

For blind users, navigating a world dominated by visual media has been challenging. While screen readers help with text, images and videos often remain inaccessible. PiccyBot addresses this gap by transforming visual content into a format that blind users can understand and share, making digital interactions more inclusive.

P&G’s Tactile Markings for Accessible Packaging

Procter & Gamble (P&G) has introduced tactile markings on some of its product packaging to help blind and low-vision consumers identify products by touch.

The first implementation was in Herbal Essences hair care bottles, with distinct raised symbols - a row of raised stripes or dots - for shampoo and conditioner. These tactile symbols are laser-etched into the plastic during manufacturing. Visually, they appear as a series of small ridges, but their primary purpose is tactile – a blind user can feel the linear texture and recognize it as the shampoo or conditioner indicator. The stripes allow a visually impaired person to confirm they have a shampoo bottle or the conditioner bottle in hand without needing sight.

These tactile symbols were developed by P&G’s inclusive design team led by Sumaira Latif (who is blind herself) to solve a common problem: telling shampoo and conditioner apart in the shower. Importantly, P&G opted for these intuitive shapes instead of braille text because fewer than 10% of blind individuals can read braille. The stripe and circle markers can be recognized by anyone through touch, including people with low vision or even sighted consumers not wearing glasses in the bath. The markers are placed at the bottom of bottles where the plastic is thickest, so the laser-etched bumps don’t weaken the packaging.

Herbal Essences was the pilot brand for P&G’s tactile packaging in 2020, and it earned positive feedback from blind consumers for the added independence it affords. P&G has encouraged other manufacturers to adopt similar tactile codes, hoping to spark industry-wide standardization of accessible packaging symbols.

In addition to the shampoo/conditioner notches, P&G has extended its focus on accessible design to other products. In 2021, P&G’s Olay skin care brand tested an Easy Open Lid for moisturizer jars, featuring an easy-grip winged cap, high-contrast label, and braille text reading “face cream” on the lid. This braille-labeled lid was designed so blind users can identify the product by touch and open it more easily (it has two large wing-like tabs for leverage). P&G has also started adding NaviLens codes (a type of high-contrast QR code for the visually impaired) on some packaging. For example, Pantene shampoo in the UK was slated to include NaviLens codes so that a blind shopper could scan the pack with a phone and hear product details read aloud. In Europe, P&G’s Ariel laundry detergent introduced a NaviLens code on its Ariel SECURECLIC packs to help visually impaired customers locate the product on a store shelf via their smartphone. These efforts show P&G’s multi-faceted approach to accessibility: tactile cues for instant product identification, braille or embossed text for key information, and smart codes for more detailed audio information.

The growing number of tactile and accessible packaging initiatives shows a positive industry trend toward inclusive design. P&G’s simple shampoo/conditioner notches have been widely praised as a practical, elegant solution, and they even inspired other companies to explore accessible packaging efforts. Accessibility organizations and advocates emphasize that these features, whether raised symbols, braille, or smart codes, greatly improve independence for blind and low-vision individuals. There is also a call for standardization – for example, adopting common tactile symbols across brands – so that a blind consumer doesn’t have to learn a new “code” for every product. Efforts by companies like P&G are laying the groundwork for these discussions.

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