ATU696 – eSight with Roland Mattern

Hi, this is Roland Mattern, Director of Sales for eSight by Gentex Corporation, and this is your Assistive Technology Update.

Hello and welcome to your Assistive Technology Update, a weekly dose of information that keeps you up to date on the latest developments in the field of technology designed to assist individuals with disabilities and special needs. I’m your host, Josh Anderson with the INDATA Project at Easterseals Crossroads in beautiful Indianapolis Indiana. Welcome to episode 696 of Assistive Technology Update. It is scheduled to be released on September 27th, 2024. On today’s show, we’re super excited to be joined by Roland Mattern. He is the director of sales for eSight and he’s here to tell us about the new exciting eSight Go. We also welcome back Amy Berry from Bridging Apps with an app worth mentioning. Also, I have a quick story about Be My Eyes and their acquisition of AppleViz. Listeners, if you’re looking for a transcript of today’s show, please go to EastersealsTech.com and it’ll be available right there. We do want to thank INTRAC for sponsoring our captions. You can find out more about INTRAC at indianarelay.com.

As you know listeners, we’re always looking for your ideas, your questions, and your comments. If you’ve got an idea for someone we have on the show, a comment, a question or anything like that, please reach out to us. You can send us an email at Tech@Eastersealscrossroads.org or call our listener line at (317) 721-7124. One thing we’re definitely looking for some listener feedback on is every year right around Black Friday, that Friday after Thanksgiving, we usually do our annual gift giving guide. I usually work to get some folks together from here at Easterseals Crossroads from our AT team and from some other teams just to talk about some really great gift ideas for individuals with disabilities, some different kinds of AT or just some different cool stuff that they’re looking forward to this season.

And while I know it’s not even quite October, I’d just love to have some input if there’s some different assistive technology that you thinks super cool that came out this year, or maybe some things to think about as you give gifts to your loved ones, family members, and friends with disabilities. So remember, you can always reach out and let us know your thoughts at Tech@Eastersealscrossroads.org or by calling our listener line at (317) 721-7124. We thank you for taking time out of your day to give us a listen. Now let’s go ahead and get on with the show.

Listeners, we are super excited to partner with our employment program here at Easterseals Crossroads to offer assistive technology and employment full day training coming up on Thursday, October 3rd from 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM Eastern Time. This marks our final full day training of the year here for us here at INDATA. And as I said, we’re very excited to partner with our employment program here at Easterseals Crossroads in honor of National Disability Employment Awareness Month. During this training, we are super excited to welcome folks from JAN to present on inclusive strategies for welcoming applicants and including employees with disabilities. I’ll also present on assistive technology, job placement, job accommodation and all that fun stuff. And then we will welcome the folks from our employment program here at Easterseals Crossroads for a whole seminar on the job search, as well as an employer panel featuring representatives for some employers here in Indiana and how they work to employ individuals with disabilities.

So we’re very, very excited for this training and as I said, it will happen on October 3rd to kick off National Disability Employment Awareness Month. If you are interested in attending any of our trainings, but especially this one coming up on October 3rd, you can go over to Eastersealstech.com, check out our full day trainings and sign up right there. It is free to attend, but you do have to register, especially if you need any of those continuing education units or CEUs. This training is available both online and in person, so if you’re not able to make it here to Indianapolis, you can always join us online. Or if you happen to be in the neighborhood, please do stop by. We always love having folks in person now that that is again a possibility. So if you’re interested in learning more about assistive technology and employment, please do join us for our full day training on Thursday, October 3rd from 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM Eastern here at Easterseals Crossroads and online.

You can check that out at Eastersealstech.com. I will also put a link down in the show notes where you can go and secure your tickets. Don’t forget it is free to attend, but you do have to register in order to be able to attend that day both in person and online. We look forward to seeing you there. Folks, we cannot thank you enough for giving us a listen here at Assistive Technology Update. Without you, we would not have been around for, coming up on, getting pretty darn close to that 700 episode mark, but did you know that this is not the only podcast that we have? You can also check out our sister show Assistive Technology Frequently Asked Questions. This show comes out once a month and it features panelists Belva Smith, Brian Norton, and myself as we try to answer the questions that are plaguing your mind about assistive technology.

We gather up all the questions we get during the month from emails, phone calls, and many other means, and then we do our best to answer them. I got to tell you folks, believe it or not, we do not know everything. So we rely on our listeners a lot to reach out to us and give us some of those answers or maybe just talk about their personal experiences and things that have happened to them. So if you like Assistive Technology Update, you may very well love Assistive Technology Frequently Asked Questions. Again, thats Assistive Technology Frequently Asked Questions, where you can get your questions about assistive technology answered, or if you happen to have the answers to some of the questions asked on that show, please, please, please do reach out and let us know so that we can help the community with the answers that they so desperately seek. Much like Assistive Technology Update, you can find Assistive Technology Frequently Asked Questions wherever you prefer to get your podcasts. And as always listeners, thank you for listening.

Next up on the show, please join me in welcoming back Amy Berry from Bridging Apps with an app worth mentioning.

This is Amy Berry with Bridging Apps and this is an app worth mentioning. This week’s featured app is called My Therapy Pill Reminder. My Therapy is a free medication and refill reminder app in which users are also able to record measurements, symptoms, and doctor visits in the integrated patient diary. My Therapy is extremely intuitive and pairs well with wearable devices like an Apple Watch. Our reviewer liked that she was able to receive medication reminders on her watch. This app is great at allowing users to independently manage their medications but still have access to accountability and support if needed.

It allows all family members and caregivers to become involved in an individual’s care by allowing users to share a copy of their medication information so that everyone knows what meds they’re on. My Therapy would greatly benefit anyone who is looking for a way to manage their medications, whether it is just one or several, it would be an especially helpful tool for individuals who are reward driven as the hidden picture is a great feature to encourage and motivate users to take their meds. This would be a great app for individuals with autism who are seeking to independently manage their medications. The app is compatible with voiceover and spoken content. My Therapy is completely free despite the app store showing in-app purchases. These in-app purchases are voluntary donations to the My Therapy teams and are not required to have full access to the app. The app is currently available for both Android and iOS devices. For more information on this app and others like it visit bridgingapps.org.

Listeners, you may have heard us mention AppleViz here on the show. If you haven’t heard us mention it on this, you’ve definitely heard us mention it over at ATFAQ because I know we definitely tell folks to go there, check out some things. They have a really good online community. It’s very active, engaged, folks talking about Apple products, about different Apple apps. In fact, the folks of Be My Eyes who you heard here earlier will also send folks to AppleViz sometimes, just is a really a great resource. And in July it was found out that it was going to go away. Actually it was announced that by the end of August it would gone. Well, here we are in September and Be My Eyes, a company that helps out individuals who are blind or low vision through either volunteers, through sighted volunteers, or now through artificial intelligence, has stepped up and bought AppleViz.

So Be My Eyes and AppleViz will be partnering, which is really great. Another really great tool and we’re going to have folks on here in just a few minutes from eSight to talk about the amazing tools that they have and the more tools you have in the toolbox, the more access you have to the world around you. So we’ll put a link in the show notes over to the story from Be My Eyes, just about their acquisition of AppleViz, but we’re so happy to see this resources still going to be there. And just a little quote off of the kind of story here. It says, “Dave Godwin built something remarkable and immensely valuable, and when the Be My Eyes team discussed the possible closure, we quickly concluded that we had to do something to keep such an important and loved community resource available.” Said Mike Buckley, CEO of Be My Eyes.

“From the first call with the AppleViz team, we not only learned that we shared the same values and mission, but that we also had similar ideas for how to grow AppleViz and make it even more useful in the future. As always, we will listen and learn first and then continue to build AppleViz with the direct input and leadership of the blind and low vision community.” So again, from all of us AT Update, we are super excited that AppleViz is still going to be around. We’re excited for this partnership with Be My Eyes. We’re excited that there are just more and more resources and devices and other things out there to be able to help individuals with disabilities every single day. Be sure to check out the show notes where you’ll find a story with a little bit more in depth reporting on the partnership between Be My Eyes and AppleViz. Listeners, today we are super excited to welcome Roland from eSight to the show and he’s going to tell us all about eSight and some of the really exciting updates. Roland, welcome to the show.

Great to be here. Thank you.

Yeah, I am excited to talk all about eSight and especially some of the kind of new and really cool stuff that you all have. But before we do that, could you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?

Sure. My name is Roland Mattern. I’m the director of sales for eSight by Gentex Corporation. I’ve been with eSight for about three and a half years. Came in as a director of marketing, went to director of sales and marketing, and as some of you may know in November, the Gentex Corporation acquired eSight and I’m currently tasked with commercializing our latest product, the eSight Go. So that’s one of the huge updates for us is that we are now part of a large publicly traded company. So we have access to lots of resources that allow us to continue to improve our products and bring new products to market in future years.

Awesome. And you kind of already led me into my next question we’ll get into as we go just about eSight and about everything else. But let’s start off with the eSight Go. Can you tell us a little bit about them?

Sure. eSight Go is our latest generation product for those who’ve been following the eSight story, it’s actually the fifth generation of products. We’ve named it eSight Go because philosophically it is a really easy use product in the sense that you just put it on and you can go about your business. And the biggest thing you’ll notice when you first see the eSight go versus previous generation technologies is it’s gotten much smaller, much lighter, much easier to use. So when you actually put it on, it kind of looks like a pair of larger sunglasses versus having a halo design in previous versions. So the weight’s been reduced drastically to 169 grams for the headset and we’ve taken the battery right out of the headset and put it around the wearer’s neck. So it looks like a little bit of a U-shaped yoke you wear around your neck with a short connector cable to the headset and it takes all that weight of the batteries out of the headset.

That is awesome. And for folks who maybe don’t know about eSight or maybe hasn’t heard about it, what all can the glasses do?

Well, eSight is specifically designed for individuals that have central vision loss. So the most common pathologies that cause that are macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy, but there are about 20 different pathologies that can rob you of your central vision. In essence, what eSight Go does, it uses a high definition camera to capture the central image that the person can no longer perceive, runs it through a software algorithm which allows the wearer to manipulate the image to maximize retinal stimulation, and then that image is projected onto two high definition OLED screens inside the headset and we blast that central image across the entire retina surface and whatever photoreceptors are still viable, either the macula, the paraphobia and or the periphery get enough information from that image to the brain to interpret it as vision. And as our users describe it, the blind spot simply shrinks away.

So we’ve been completely validated to give people seven lines of distance acuity on the Snellen chart, six lines of near acuity, 12 letters of contrast, and we’ve shown that we improve the ability to complete tasks of daily living, we’ve shown improvement in quality of life and we’ve shown 12 letters of contrast. So individuals can, in many cases, go back to recognizing faces, reading their favorite book, watching TV or live sports. So we really try to integrate the product into the day-to-day living so they can go back to a relatively independent and normal day-to-day.

Oh definitely. And Roland, just because again, maybe for our folks who don’t know the eSight story, I know this is the fifth iteration, it’s got some really great and really super cool new features. But what started it all off? Why was eSight started?

Yeah, it’s a great story that’s really an emotional inspiration from the founder. So the founder’s name was Conrad Lewis and he was an electrical engineer in Ottawa Canada. And both his sisters were born with Stargardt’s disease. So by the time they hit their early twenties, they for the most part lost their central vision and he just wanted to find a solution to help his sisters. So being an electrical engineer, he just went down to the basement and started tinkering with ideas and eventually came up with has become the eSight solution for central vision loss.

Nice. Super, super cool. And like you said, I know these are a little bit more portable and everything else, but what made him decide to go with wearables? At the time, especially that eSight came out, it was pretty new. So what’s the importance of using wearable assistive technology? How does that help folks with access?

Yeah, I think the most important aspect of wearable technology, whether it’s our device or any other assistive devices that are out there that are wearable, is it really drives independence. If you imagine if you have a desktop CCTV for reading as an example, it’s great technology. You could put your newspaper, your book underneath that, but if you’re out in the grocery store or you’re waiting for a bus or you’re walking your dog, you need to read a directional sign, that technology really doesn’t help you because it’s not with you.

Whereas with the eSight technology, the way it’s designed is when you need to leverage the camera for your central vision for reading as an example, the device is always with you because you’re wearing it like a pair of glasses. But if you’re navigating the park or the grocery store or the mall, you still have full access to your peripheral vision. So you can use your peripheral vision to safely navigate. And then when you need to read a price tag, a food label, recognize somebody’s face or see which bus you’re getting on, then you can leverage the technology. Or if you’re sitting and reading a book or watching TV or maybe a sporting event or live theater, then you’re using the camera full time to give you that central perception.

Well, can you tell me what lessons were learned from the previous devices to really fuel the innovation in the new eSight Go? What kind of user feedback or what things did you hear that really helped design this newest version?

Yeah, absolutely. So the biggest feature set that people give us feedback on is just physical appearance. The eSight 4 is a great device, but you definitely look like you’re wearing an assistive device and many people don’t want to stand out in a crowd. They don’t want to be seen as different when they’re out and about. So really from a design perspective, the objective was really to reduce size, reduce weight, so you could blend in and almost be mistaken of just wearing a pair of large sunglasses in a crowd so you don’t stand out as much. The second piece of feedback we got is these technologies are still relatively expensive, so can we reduce the price? So again, we worked very, very hard with the newest technologies to keep price down and we’re very happy to say that the eSight Go’s price tag has been reduced down to $4,950 from close to $7,000. So we’ve been able to reduce the price significantly to a more affordable level to make it more accessible.

And then of course the third piece would be image quality. So what can we do to make the image clearer and easier to access, easier to manipulate? So we worked very hard on the software to make it more user friendly and we worked very hard on technologies to make that image clearer. So we’ve improved our field of view. We’ve gone to a face detection autofocus system, which is faster, more sensitive. Obviously we’ve reduced the weight and the appearance of the device. We’re using high definition OLED screens, which are brighter than previous. All those things feed into the ability to produce a better, brighter image for the person to perceive. We’ve also integrated phenomenal image stabilization technology, so now when you’re magnified and zoomed in, that image is much more stable than it used to be, making it easier to perceive.

That’s absolutely awesome. I also love that you took the battery pack and put it around the neck. I just know some folks with any kind of wearable really that weight on the head, especially if it’s something I’m using for quite a while, can really, really get to folks. With the battery and everything, on a full charge about how long could I be using the eSight glasses before I need to charge them?

Great question. So usability and length of usability is always very, very important, of course. The battery we now have integrated into the system that you wear around your neck has been testing between three and five hours depending on user conditions. So I think our official claim will be three to four hours. But you can imagine depending on the brightness level you’re using, how much you’re zooming in and out, whether you’re using both screens or one screen depending on what your view of your, the vision in your eyes are. You can have a broad range of battery battery time, but if you do have a situation where you’re watching a long movie or reading a book and you need continuous power, you can always plug into an AC outlet and have the device fully powered

For sure. And yeah, I mean just for out and about, that’s definitely great, then if you needed at a job or someplace else, hopefully you’re close to a power outlet could use it. But still, I just remember when the first wearables come out, it came out and just the battery, you were lucky if it lasted you a few hours and usually pretty giant. So I love, love how far those have come. And like I said, just the fact that you took it down to a part of the body that’s not going to take as much strain as of the neck and head. Roland, you probably got tons of these, but could you tell us a story about somebody using either the eSight Go or one of the other great products from eSight, just how maybe it was able to make a positive impact on their life?

Yeah, absolutely mean there’s lots of stories to choose from. One comes to mind of a university student with Stargardt’s disease that very quickly lost his vision and it quickly impacted his ability to engage in his education and engage in his social life. And with eSight, he goes to university in Canada and he’s pursuing am engineering degree and is using technology in the classroom and on campus not only to help in his academic pursuits, but also in his social pursuits. Imagine just going the coffee shop with your friends and being able to read the menu and see their faces as you have a conversation. So there’s one story. And there’s other stories where people have lost similar vision due to age-related macular degeneration, and you can imagine losing their hobbies, the ability to read is devastating. And having people come back to what they love to do and being able to do that effectively brings an incredible increase the quality of life and also perhaps could maybe sidestep some of the anxiety that goes along with vision and hearing loss.

So that’s the other side of the coin. It’s not just about the ability to see or hear, but your social interactions disappear or come back with that ability. So we have lots and lots of stories where individuals sort of disengaged socially from their friends, family and peers, and were able to reconnect once they had the technology in their lives. We also have lots of stories of individuals that are mid-career and they lose vision for one reason or another and were able to regain employment and going back to their career path because they now are able to function with technology, like you said, go in hand. So lots and lots of stories we could get into and hopefully many, many more to come.

Yeah, nice. And you brought up just some great scenarios, like you said, just participating in kind of everything, be it work, be it school, be it socially. And I know just wearables like the eSight go, I just love having them, because so long, especially in the workplace, if you needed magnification or any kind of visual enhancement, you were pretty much taken away a hand. You had to hold something or hold something under something or not be able to just access it by just wearing your glasses on there. So it makes such a huge difference. Roland, I know you said it’s eSight by Gentex Corporation. Can you tell us a little bit about Gentex Corporation and just maybe how that kind of helps out eSight?

Absolutely. So Gentex Corporation actually is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year in 2024. They’re a publicly traded company and their expertise is really in digital vision, in sensing, in connectivity, and in glass handling. And of course all those things lead to the technology that is in eSight. So we have camera, which is digital vision. We have miniature displays, OLEDs, which of course is glass handling and micro electronics and of course sensors. So those are the core competencies of Gentex. And we met really through a contractual design relationship to help us develop the eSight Go. And as the process was evolving, they saw the value in this product, the independence and benefit it brings to potential wearers. So they decided to no longer be an investor but acquire the entire portfolio of the company. So now we are eSight by Gentex Corporation and we’re very happy to be part of such a wonderful organization that’s been around for so long.

Roland, if listeners want to find out more about eSight Go or looking into getting them, what’s some great ways for them to do that?

Oh, you can certainly go on our website at esighteyewear.com. There’s lots of user stories there. There’s information on eSight Go. We’re just in the process of updating the website as well, so please keep coming back as more and more information gets loaded up there. There’s also the opportunity to reach out to us via forms you can fill out and of course telephone numbers. And if you’re on the homepage, on the top right, there’s also a button, which is called free consultation. And the free consultation button will take you to a short quiz that allows you to assess whether you’re a good candidate for the product or not.

Excellent, excellent. We will definitely put a link to that down in the show notes. Roland, thank you so much for coming on today for telling us about all the great things about eSight and especially the new eSight Go. And we can’t wait to try it out, to see how it helps folks. And again, just thanks for telling us all about it.

It’s my pleasure. Anytime.

Do you have a question about assistive technology? Do you have a suggestion for someone we should interview on Assistive Technology Update? If so, call our listener line at (317) 721-7124. Send us an email at tech@ Eastersealscrossroads.org or shoot us a note on Twitter @INDATA Project. Our captions and transcripts for the show are sponsored by the Indiana Telephone Relay Access Corporation, or INTRAC. You can find out more about INTRAC at relayindiana.com. A special thanks to Nicole Prieto for scheduling our amazing guests and making a mess of my schedule. Today’s show is produced, edited, hosted and fraught over by yours truly. The opinions expressed by our guests are their own and may or may not reflect those of the INDATA Project, Easterseals Crossroads, our supporting partners, or this host. This was your Assistive Technology Update. I’m Josh Anderson with the INDATA Project at Easterseals Crossroads in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana. We look forward to seeing you next time. Bye-Bye.