I have been looking at the Meta smart glasses since Be my eyes announced a collaboration with the Meta glasses and associated software. I am finding a lot of other smart glasses, coming to market and being announced at the Consumer Electronic Show. Is there anything comparable in the mainstream market that serves the blind community as well as the Meta glasses? I am seeing a lot of "smart" glasses, including new versions of the Meta glasses that come with a screen. Since I am totally blind, this would not work for me, although others with low vision may find this helpful. I have always been an advocate for mainstream software/hardware that has accessibility built in, like the iPhone, Apple Watch, etc. Anything in mainstream tech that compares or improves on the access features of the Meta glasses?
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I think they are the best for price and funtionality currently,
If you can, hold off for now, unless you can afford both. They are useful, don't get me wrong, but they are also highly frustrating too as they are painfully close to being good, but I'm not sure if that final step will ever be taken to make them into the device we so want. It's meta, and their track record for accessibility isn't terrible, but it's also not amazing. I can't imagine that changing. Also, remember the Ray-Bans are cheap for what they are, and the main purpose of them is not to provide function to the user, that's kinda secondary, but it's to create more content and data for Meta. It's a data collection device you wear on your face.
Of course, if you're cool with that, that's cool! But I don't know how high accessibility really is on its list of priorities. The BME integration is amazing! Outstanding work, but I worry that is the exception rather than the rule. We still need solid OCR to really make them viable and that's not yet forthcoming on either BME, I don't think, or Meta AI.
Don't get me started on the issues with region locking too.
In short, they are the best you can get now for the price, no doubt. But I think, and hope, better platforms are on the horizon that will actually serve us directly rather than us trying to make a mainstream product conform to our needs.
Best for now
Ollie, Thanks for the thoughts. I am hoping that Meta is interested in accessibility. I know hope is not a plan but the integration with BME is some kind of indication they are aware of the capabilities their smart glasses have for the blind community. The lack of OCR is not necessarily a show stopper for me. It seems like anything not specifically designed for the blind, is moving into the visual space with some kind of screen. The smart glasses that have more functionality for the blind are more expensive and usually come with some kind of subscription cost. I was hoping that something at CES would point to a competing product. Based on the responses I have not gotten to my post and my own observations, there is nothing in the works, not even from Meta. I'll hold off for now and see how the market proceeds. Maybe another black Friday type sale will come around. Maybe BME will enhance their integration with the Meta glasses. Just watching for now. Thanks again
It did sound like BME has…
It did sound like BME has more up it's sleeve.
I think it's also worth watching apple. It's obviously a growing space now and if apple come in with it, especially if it's IOS 19 with their own LLM, it might be very interesting. I'm not sure how they would deal with privacy or if they are just waiting for smart glasses to become so ubiquitous that questions of privacy are no longer an issue.
It's all so frustratingly close. I do also hope meta do open up to letting their glasses work for us, but I'm not going to hold my breath. Without getting too political, I'm not sure meta's priorities hold minorities and marginalised peoples in high regard... Or maybe I'm just reading the wrong papers.
For now, I'm looking for a chest mount for my iPhone to use with Chat GPT or Gemini's live video streams. I'll look like a bit of a dork, but only when wondering through the city streets.
Not to get political
Not to get political but there seems to be a move at present, especially among social media companies, to pull back from diversity initiatives. We'll have to see what happens.
I agree that mainstream devices are generally the better solution, as evidenced by smartphones, but my opinion is this relies on opening up the platform to outside developers. What Apple will do remains to be seen but they may be watching and waiting, especially after the vision pro headset was met with pretty much meh. I'd argue even the apple watch, while commercially successful, wasn't the level of success they initially hoped for simply because not everyone has a use case that justifies buying an entire device.
Saw an Apple related article about that on LinkedIn
For better or worse, Apple is standing by their diversity initiative practices.
Meta
Facebook have issues with accessibility and using the apps is no longer easy and so many bugs regarding VO do not know how is with android. Do not think they care much about accessibility just the old way. Money. For them is how to get it, how to use the people who use their products to give them money.