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AREA 23, AN IPG HEALTH NETWORK COMPANY, New York / HORIZON THERAPEUTICS / 2022
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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.
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 soundscapes, allowing the blind to visualize their surroundings. Changes in pitch, volume, and spatial sound convey information on the size, shape, distance, and direction of objects.
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 and allow users to build a clearer picture of the world around them.
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Echolocation is a sensory substitution skill with major utility in the blind community. With practice, blind practitioners can make clicking sounds that reverberate off surroundings, giving them greater spatial information. However, echolocation is not widely accessible and takes years to learn, and only 1% of the blind community have learned the skill.
Studies have shown that echolocation involves more than just sound processing. MRI scans have shown that echolocation activates the visual cortex in the brain, organizing the sound information visually and allowing a blind person to “see” their surroundings.
Eyedar has the potential to redefine what it means to be blind. Echolocation has already shown how it can positively impact the lives of those who use it, and the only impediment to widespread adoption is the accessibility of learning the skill. Eyedar removes that.
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