I was a guest in-person On Friday, at Vista Center Ignite Accessibility Entrepreneur Pitch Competition an exclusive event where leading entrepreneurs in accessibility and assistive technology presented their innovative products and ideas to a panel of investors, consumers, and industry leaders.
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// I was excited to give this a test drive, but found out they were not doing test drives and they just had a static demo of a steering wheel being steered remotely.
They had a total of 14 companies apply/submit to the Pitch competition. The three finalists that will present on the stage are:
// They were present in-person and had live working demo. They won and is really simple and just works like star trek magic. It's a ring that you wear that has a button to press and has 3x magnetic covers that go onto switches and can be toggled by pointing and clicking with the ring. It doesn't require bluetooth, Internet, or pairing/setting up. It just uses infrared and can work with an infinite number of rings and magnetic switch covers. I pre-ordered wiht $50 promo discount it and look forward to getting it by December for Xmas! - Lighthouse Tech
// This is a wearable glasses that is suppose to provide different levels of haptic feedback for head and shoulder level obstacles, which I was excited to try. It was interesting as in the morning while at Vista Center, I was walking from exhibit hall area to restroom and ran into the corner of a door and hit my left eye brow, which this would have been perfect for. I went to their booth, but found out they were on video from Switzerland and didn't have the glasses there to try and won't until CSUN in March. - Equivalent
// Virtual from North Carolina. Suppose to make SmartSVG by first focusing on making it accessibility compliant and respond to visual accessibility settings. Screen reader and tactile graphics accessibility were things I inquired about, but not happening yet. .
- Benvision were virtual on a laptop that I couldn't hear. is suppose to be similar to indoor mapping provided by GoodMaps, but instead of speech-based info, it uses musical tones to provide spatial info, but there wasn't a demo or something to try. A side-project that I found interesting is Speakaboo that uses Gen AI to provide descriptions in 2 ways: double-tap for instant description and double-tap and hold to ask for specifics with spoken descriptions. It's simpler and faster than Be My AI or Access AI, but not as detailed or emotional.
- Agiga were in-person with prototype. Is a smart glasses wearable that uses Gen AI to describe scene, but also has Be My Eyes and AIRA integration. I was able to try both the scene description and Be My Eyes. TO invoke, it requires saying "Hello Agiga". I first tried AIRA, but it wasn't working. The scene description worked well, where it mentioned 2 people and one with a name tag, and I wanted to ask a follow up about what the name tag said, but follow-up isn't supported yet. I tried AIRA, but it wasn't working. Be My Eyes worked, but it was a bit hard to hear the volunteer because of it being so loud. It's suppose to be a platform and work with anything and be between $500-1K.
- Oorion was not there physically, but had Vista Center staff demoing and is an app that I found out about on AppleVIs and have been using for a bit already. It's an app that can let you know about available objects or text, scan for specific text or objects, and even add personal objects to locate. It provides great feedback of when it sees the text or object and gives you feedback of when you're getting closer and can reach the item.
- PocketDot were in-person and had prototype. It was something that was not even listed, but was my favorite. What a hidden gem that I accidentally found when exhibit time was over and pitch was starting. It's a 8-cell Braille HID Braille display that MagSafe onto the back of iPhone. It has USB-C for charging. It has 9 keys in 3 by 3 grid. Left and right columns are braille dots, and buttons in the middle columns are for BACKSPACE, RETURN, and SPACEBAR.
This allows user to use phone and PocketDot in Portrait and Landscape mode. They're looking for beta testers, which I signed up, and you can to at the link above.
There were other vendors exhibiting, but these were my highlights and ones I found worthwhile.
I recorded some videos of my experience while there with Meta Ray-Bans.