A few technology enthusiasts from San Diego, engineers from Jacobs School of Engineering and social entrepreneurs from Rady School of Management, came together with a greater degree of community spirit, to solve the problem of isolation for visually impaired and blind. Motivated by the story of their friend and inspiration, Matt Brock, who is legally blind, the Kast team conducted 6 months of lean startup experiments to understand the needs of visually impaired individuals and developed KastEye, an application that is available on Google Glass.
“For the blind or visually impaired, reaching a greater sense of independence while remaining connected to those most important to you is now only 3 taps away with a new app for Google Glass,†says Robin Bisarya, VP of Business Development, Kast Inc., a tech startup based in downtown San Diego.
KastEye is an application for Google Glass built on the KastCore platform, which is used to stream live video, track current locations, and send other surrounding information from its users to the backend server. A personalized agent can then use this information on an intuitive dashboard to provide instant feedback via audio without being physically present with the visually impaired user. The agent can be a family member, a volunteer, or a certified Kast Agent.
“The mission of KastEye is to become a trusted source for visually impaired individuals. KastEye has the ability to change lives and offer its users a new kind of access to their surrounding world,†says a founder of Kast Inc.
KastEye is set to launch on Oct 18th at Vision Walk with their low vision friends Jalil Farahmand and Elena Dougan, both have been involved in Kast’s product design and development process from its inception through live testing and feedback. Jalil has had impaired vision for the past 10 years due to Retinitis Pigmentosa. He has a full time computer-based job and relies on a personal assistant or guide to accomplish his outdoor chores. Jalil’s first experience with KastEye endorsed Kast’s mission to offer independence to their user.
He said,
“It’s great to get immediate feedback. Now I can actually get around the area by myself.†Elena, a single mom of two kids, after a similar experiment said, “Not just guidance, but the value KastEye adds is the ability to comfort the blind person from chaos around them.â€Â
The entire Kast architecture is hosted via Amazon Web Services and is easy to scale as demand grows. The service and training programs are ready to scale to meet the demand as well. At this time Kast is looking for sponsors and partners to help bringing the product to as many people as possible.
You can find out more about KastEye at http://www.kastnow.com/eye.[signoff predefined=”Enjoy this?” icon=”icon-users”][/signoff]
