OrCam's Reading Device Wins Prestigious Innovation Award

December 16, 2020 – OrCam, whose myEye device is covered in a subsequent entry, is an Israel-based startup that uses AIA.I.o to build devices for people with vision disabilities. Recently, the OrCam Read won the Best Innovation award in the "accessibility" category at CES 2021, one of the world's most influential technology competitions for design and engineering. The announcement was made ahead of the virtual event, which will take place January 11-14. OrCam Read aims to support people with print disabilities like dyslexia, mild to moderate vision loss and reading fatigue. It is a pen-sized, handheld device that reads full pages or screens of text aloud from various surfaces, including newspapers, books, product labels, computers, and smartphones. It works offline without requiring an internet connection. 

OrCam Read's AIA.I.lgorithms enable the point-and-click operation to read the entire highlighted text or target where to begin reading. The device's text-to-speech reading engine incorporates a new voice-activated assistant feature that uses advanced computer vision and natural language understanding (NLU) technologies to operate. Activated by the user's voice, the algorithm listens to the user's requests, retrieves relevant information, and reads the requested text to the user within a few seconds, OrCam said in a statement.

A year ago, the firm's device for hearing disabilities, the wearable OrCam Hear, received the CES 2020 "Best of Innovation" award for accessibility. According to the Calcalist, a financial website, OrCam is seeking to hold an initial public offering of shares in New York in 2021 to raise $300 million at a valuation of $3 billion. [Source: Shoshanna Solomon, The Times of Israel]

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OrCam's AI-based reading device wins prestigious CES 2021 innovation award