Meta Updates Its Glasses to Improve Accessibility

On Global Accessibility Awareness Day, Meta has announced new features for Ray-Ban smart glasses, developed together with EssilorLuxottica. Using the camera and artificial intelligence, the glasses can now tell more about what is around them, making them a more valuable support for the blind and visually impaired.

Meta shared a video of the tool in action, in which a user asks Meta AI, the assistant of the American giant launched in Italy in recent weeks, to describe a green area in a park. The AI ​​correctly indicates a path, trees and a body of water in the distance. 'With this new feature, Meta AI will be able to provide more descriptive answers when people ask about the surrounding environment' reads an official note.

'This innovation will be distributed first in the United States and Canada and then in other countries.' In another example, the glasses help you locate what is on a kitchen table, explaining in detail where the items are, with references such as right or left. Another announcement dedicated to accessibility is "call a volunteer," which automatically connects people who are blind or visually impaired with a 'network of volunteers in real time' to help them carry out daily activities. The volunteers come from the Be My Eyes foundation and the platform will launch by the end of the month in 18 countries. In extended reality devices, such as the VR Quest line of viewers, subtitles are arriving that convert voice conversations into text for the deaf.