An Easier Way to Shop Online With Vision Loss: InnoSearch AI

Hadley

An Easier Way to Shop Online With Vision Loss: InnoSearch AI

Presented by Ricky Enger

Ricky Enger: After vision loss, online shopping can be frustrating for a variety of reasons. In this episode, Patrick Long, co-founder of technology non-profit, Innosearch AI joins us to discuss a service making shopping straightforward and accessible. I'm Ricky Enger, and this is Hadley Presents. Welcome to the show, Patrick. So glad to have you.

Patrick Long: Yeah, it's wonderful to be here Ricky, and would love to continue to share more and discuss how we make online shopping more accessible.

Ricky Enger: Wonderful. I am excited that you are able to join us. Shopping is one of my favorite things, but it can also be one of the most frustrating things, as I said, for a variety of reasons. And I'm really happy that Innosearch has kind of attempted to take on some of that challenge, some of that frustration and just make it a little easier because when you're shopping, you want to get what you want and move on with your day. You don't necessarily want to be fighting with technology, and it might be a little overwhelming for you to begin with. So, we will get into a lot of that in just a bit. Before we do though, why don't you tell us a bit about yourself and how you came to actually work on Innosearch in the first place?

Patrick Long: Yeah, so I've always been a lifelong entrepreneur, always obsessed about seeing how new technologies can benefit the lives of others. A few years back, actually, I stumbled upon this AI craze alongside my co-founder Brian, who has a background at Google and working on different AI technologies and just experimenting with what the chatbot could do, the potential of it. We just discovered that there's just so much that can be done to help assist people with various disabilities, not just blind and low vision get access to essential digital services. As we talk with a lot of our users, what we found is although sites claim to be accessible, you can still be compliant but not usable. That's a core problem we're trying to resolve at Innosearch.

Ricky Enger: And you're absolutely right. There are sites that may have all of their buttons labeled and maybe the contrast is good, but suddenly you end up with a lot of popups and you've lost where you are on the screen, or it's inefficient to get around or any number of reasons, or even that a site changes its layout. And so, this thing that you're accustomed to then somebody comes in and rearranges the furniture, which can be really, really frustrating. So, for people who are not familiar with Innosearch, I want to make sure that before we have a conversation about how it works, we actually talk about what it is. So, can you describe what Innosearch is and how it might be better using Innosearch as opposed to something like Amazon or walmart.com or any online retailer you can think of?

Patrick Long: Yeah, I mean Innosearch in a nutshell is just a platform for shopping built specifically for the blind and low vision. So other sites out there, they cater to people who are sighted. So, there's a lot of visual elements to the website. There's like you mentioned, popups, animations, videos. This is a very graphic experience and as you mentioned also, they're always changing it up. At Innosearch, we actually do it opposite. We built it for the blind and low vision and purposely we made a lot of the elements static. So, you find the shopping bucket in exactly the same spot each and every time. There's absolutely no change. Every product description and details are described exactly the same way each and every time. So, it's something that you can learn once and then reliably depend on. It's truly a product built for the blind and low vision as the first-class citizen as opposed to other platforms out there that it's more of a visual thing. So that's what we've built, and we have it working for shopping. So, we're not a company that sells goods. We are an aggregator, so we collect all the listings from the various platforms and then we display it to you in an accessible way. So we've done that for shopping, for flights, for food and groceries, and we also have another section where stores, if they're not already on search, can also create a storefront to list their own products as well.

Ricky Enger: It's a really cool approach because it's one thing to have a storefront that is approachable and accessible, but then you have the issue of, well, what inventory do you carry? But now you don't have to be concerned about that because you are partnering with retailers or you're getting that information from places like Amazon, Target, or Walmart, places that people already shop. But now you're just putting that into one easy to use place that people can go and have that same interface no matter what you're shopping for. A lot of times when we talk about something that sounds this good, the first question people have is, so what does it cost?

Patrick Long: Yeah, I mean that's great question. There's absolutely no charge to the end user. There's no subscription, no service charges. The price you pay on Innosearch will be the same as if you went to the traditional online retailer. And we are doing that by design as well. We believe in equal access. Somebody who is blind or low vision shouldn't pay a separate price, a different price than somebody who’s sighted. So, it's exactly the same. Either you're buying from Innosearch or you're going to the traditional online retailer.

Ricky Enger: So, can we just talk about daily life? Let's say, hey, I need to get some shampoo, or I need to get some cleaner for my countertop. And so how is that process going to work with Innosearch? How am I going to get from start to finish shopping for these things that I need?

Patrick Long: Yeah, so it's very simple. I mean, we operate in four countries, the US, the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada. So, it automatically detects where you're from. If you just go to Innosearch.ai and just tab over to the search field and there you can enter, let's say you're looking for shampoo, enter in shampoo and you can click enter. Once you click enter, we do a very comprehensive search from over 500,000 retailers to present to you the best options. And you can tab over and see each item described from where it's coming from, what the delivery policies are. Some are free, some have three days. There's an estimated time you would receive it, the ratings, what the item is about, how much it costs and return policies. If you want to learn more about the product, you can also double click into the item there. You'll see whatever user reviews are there.

There's also an AI chat bot for you to interact with, ask questions. If you want to know what ingredients are in the shampoo, what does the shampoo smell like, et cetera. You can ask whatever you want. And all this information is actually being extracted and taken from the individual website in real time. So, I'm just looking at a coconut natural hair shampoo from Walmart, for example. It's exactly from the Walmart site. All the information is in real time and best of all, it's in our accessible format. So, whether you're buying from Walmart or fragrances.net or wherever, the format is exactly the same on Innosearch each time. So, if you've gotten used to our formats, our layouts, it works fast and good for you, then it'll be exactly that way, whether you're shopping from Walmart or anywhere else. If you like the product, then you can just simply add to cart and then you can go through the checkout flow. And again, the checkout flow is standardized across all retailers. So, if you're able to complete it once, then you'll be able to complete it for the rest of your products as well.

Ricky Enger: Yeah, so that's your interface no matter where that stuff is coming from. So, what happens if I shop for my shampoo and I found what I wanted and then I remembered it's going to be really cold, I need to get some thick joggers or sweatpants or whatever. Am I going to need to check out my shampoo and then go back and do a separate flow for something else? Or can I kind of complete my shopping all at once and do the checkout then?

Patrick Long: Yeah, exactly right. So, you can do it all at once, right? So, after you've added the shampoo you like to your cart, you can just go back to the search field, find another item you're looking for, add it to cart, even if it's from a different retailer, that's totally okay. You can check out all at once using the same accessible checkout. So, it saves a lot of time, saves a lot of headaches, gets rid of whatever inaccessibility from whatever retailer website as well. So that's something a lot of users love actually.

Ricky Enger: I know a challenge that a lot of people have is whatever the latest and greatest technology is. Someone's listening and thinking, well, I don't have that or I don't know how to use it. All I know is how to use my computer or how to use my smartphone or how to dial a phone or any number of other ways that they approach shopping. So how is Innosearch available, where can people access it? What is that experience? Another thing that people ask about is I don't type well, I don't see the letters on the keyboard or whatever it is, so how am I going to search for what I want? Can you talk a little bit about how people can access the service technology wise?

Patrick Long: Yeah, that's a great question and that's something that's very core to our philosophy as well. We believe that we want to meet the user where they are at, whether it's a web experience, they feel comfortable using a browser and entering in whatever website they want to go to. We do that and you can go to Innosearch.ai. Maybe they feel uncomfortable and they want something more simple on the phone. We also have a voice AI phone line. So, you can actually dial 1-855-Shop-GPT, and that corresponds to the numbers 1-855-746-7478. Keep in mind, that's our US toll free number. If you're in Canada, Australia or the UK, we have a different number for that. You can find that on our website. You can also just chat with our voice AI phone line and order again, whatever you want from that exact catalog you found on the website.

So that's the second avenue you can access in searching services. And now recently we launched a third avenue, which is the iPhone and Android apps. So, we're also on the Apple App store and the Android store as well. So, you can also download our app and use the experience from there. So, we meet the user where they are. For those that typically are not so tech savvy, and they just want the absolute most simple experience we noticed the phone line actually has been a big hit. So a lot of seniors or people later in life losing their vision and maybe didn't get a chance to really be an expert at JAWS or any other screen reader technology, they just dial because with that service, they can just verbalize what they want and AI does the work for you to do the searching.

Ricky Enger: And I thought this was such a well done way to go about this too. I will admit that I was going in a little skeptical and I wanted to try it thinking there's no way that shopping just over a phone line is going to be possible in the same way as shopping from a website. And indeed, it is. Even down to going through that payment process, you're able to do that as well. Really excited to have all those different ways. And if you happen to have the Be My Eyes app on your phone, there is a place that will take you right to the Innosearch website right from within the Be My Eyes app. So, if that's something that you already have on your phone, you don't even have to type in the website now, just find that area in Be My Eyes, which is fantastic. I know when you first launched, you and I were talking about having observed Innosearch building itself, and you were concentrating on these online retailers, and I think you touched on this a bit before, but that's not all you do now. Can you talk about the other services that you offer through in a search?

Patrick Long: Yeah. Again, like what we mentioned earlier, we believe in meeting the user where their need is the most. When we first started, shopping was something top of mind because we all know how inaccessible checkout flows are and all those e-commerce websites. So that's something we started with. But as we were building, we realized and also attending a lot of conferences, talking to a lot of people, they were just telling us how inaccessible flights were and traveling with guide dogs is very challenging. So, we soon launched flight booking services. So Innosearch you can find flights, all international flights supported as well. If you have a guide dog and you're traveling with special documentation that you need submitted, we will also help you with that as well. Any other special assistance at the airport, our team can pass that on to the appropriate people for you. So, it's just a very easy selection that you can make during the checkout process and it's completely end to end and very accessible. So that feature has also been a big hit for blind low vision travelers. On top of that, we also released food and grocery delivery. We know getting a bite to eat sometimes can be challenging. Getting a ride to the grocery store can be hard. And so, we've integrated with GrubHub so you can access those services and whatever's there, you can also order on Innosearch. So, we very much evolve with the community and try to add new verticals as long as there's good demand for it.

Ricky Enger: It's always good to hear when someone is truly paying attention to what their users want and need as opposed to rolling things out and saying, hope you like it. It sounds like you really are paying attention to what people are asking for, what people are struggling with, and then making some effort to make that a bit easier. So that's amazing. Innosearch AI and we’ll have that website in the show notes, so that's in Innosearch.ai. We'll have that phone number as well, so you can check that out. Patrick, this has been really informative and I'm so excited that a service like this exists now. Before we kind of wrap things up, I'm wondering if there's anything that you can talk about that either maybe is forthcoming from Innosearch or just anything that you would like our listeners to know that we haven't been able to chat about yet.

Patrick Long: Yeah, maybe just one thing quickly. At Innosearch we believe in making digital access equal for all. We very much believe that those who are sighted and those who are blind and low vision should have exactly the same experience on digital surfaces. And actually, through a lot of thought internally, we made the decision to turn ourselves into a nonprofit, and that is to guarantee free and equal access forever. So Innosearch as a nonprofit, we'll never markup, we'll never charge a subscription or fee on what we're doing, and we'll just basically rely on grants or contributions from donors to continue to keep the service alive and free for the blind and low vision community. So that's something that's very exciting and we're very proud to continue to support the community in this way.

Ricky Enger: I love to hear that as a nonprofit ourselves, Hadley, we certainly are on board with that and so grateful for our donors as well. And I just appreciate when businesses like yours can continue to operate, have everything that people come to depend on and make sure that it remains free.

Patrick Long: Yes, I think that's very important because somebody who's blind or low vision shouldn't pay extra markup or a separate price from somebody who's sighted. The world's becoming more and more digital, and so we need to have alternatives, so everybody has equal access to the things they need every day.

Ricky Enger: Fantastic. Well, thank you so much Patrick for sharing about what Innosearch is doing, and thank you for continuing to work with the community and offering things that people truly need. I look forward to finding out what happens next within Innosearch. I'll continue to watch as you continue to add to your offerings. And if you are listening and you haven't tried Innosearch yet, do check out that website or that phone number. Give it a shot. You can even play around with it for a little bit, and if you're hesitant to press that checkout button, you can just get accustomed to it before you do that. So really nothing to lose and everything to gain. So, thank you again, Patrick, for stopping by. We really appreciate hearing from you.

Patrick Long: Yeah, absolutely. Happy to do it again anytime. Thanks a lot, Ricky.

Ricky Enger: Got something to say. Share your thoughts about this episode of Hadley Presents or make suggestions for future episodes. We'd love to hear from you. Send us an email at [email protected]. That's P-O-D-C-A-S-T at HadleyHelps.org or leave us a message at 847-784-2870. Thanks for listening.