Using the camera on your device
and a trained person on the other end of the call,
it's easy to get access to high quality visual information,
whether you're choosing items at the grocery store
or trying to find out what mischief your pet is up to now.
In this episode, Everette Bacon and Jenine Stanley
join us to discuss services from Aira.
I'm Ricky Enger and this is Hadley Presents.
Welcome to the show.
Hi, Ricky.
It is so awesome to have you both
and neither of you is a stranger to podcasting.
There is an Airacast as well
and we'll have a link to that in the show notes of course.
But for people who have not heard
either of you before, let's just do some quick intros.
So Everette, let's start with you.
Tell us a bit about you.
Thanks, Ricky.
My name is Everette Bacon.
I am a Chief of Blindness Initiatives here at Aira,
but I was a user of the product
pretty much since its inception.
Awesome, thanks Everette.
And Janine, how about you?
So I am Janine Stanley
and my title is Director of Customer Success and Engagement.
And what I do is interact of course with our customers,
primarily through our two podcasts.
We have Airacast and we have Access Matters.
Perfect.
Well again, it's wonderful to have you both
and it's interesting because I feel like on this show
Aira gets mentioned at least every second or third episode
and it is such an incredible tool in the toolbox.
And when we mention it, we do say that,
but we've never really had a chance
to dive into what Aira is.
So I'm wondering if one or both of you
wants to just give a sort of quick elevator pitch
for what Aira is.
So Aira is access to visual information
on demand from a trained visual interpreter.
Basically what that means is through your smartphone
or a desktop application,
you can get access to visual information.
So the trained visual interpreter
can see through your camera and can give you information.
They can help provide you with navigation assistance
to get you to and from your location.
They can help you do any kind of visual assistance
you might need, helping you at shopping.
I'll add to what Everette said
with one of our secret sauce ingredients here
and that is security and privacy
and the ability to read and keep secure
your personal information, such as health information,
banking, et cetera.
So for those things that you don't really want
maybe a volunteer or a family member
or somebody like that to have access to on your behalf,
we are here and we've got the protections in place
both with our visual interpreters
who sign a number of confidentiality agreements
and also in the background with our software.
Yeah, all really good points
and I think you've touched on
some of the things in my next question,
but we can expand on that a little bit.
You know, I think people, when they are new to this
and they finally find someone who's giving resources,
they get kind of inundated with all of these resources.
And so it's like, "Aira, be my eyes, look out, seeing AI."
And a person is thinking, "Well, I have no idea
"which of these does which thing."
And it feels really overwhelming
and so sometimes people just don't do anything
because it's difficult to figure out
what's the right tool for this particular task.
So I'm wondering if you could just go through
some of the things, whether they are mundane
or maybe some really creative uses for Aira
that you've seen people do.
Yeah, probably one of the biggest ones
that I hear is finding things that you've dropped.
That's a big one.
And I think it's interesting, Ricky,
that one of the first reactions that people have is,
"I'm a little nervous about calling
"because I'm not sure,
"I don't want them to see my messy house."
Trust us, but we've seen everything, it just-
You know, it doesn't matter,
the visual interpreters are here to help you.
And so things like picking up pet messes, that's a big one.
Lots of reading.
You know, I was thinking of
so many different things I've used Aira for,
from helping put together a computer desk
to putting together a table
and chairs that are on my deck
from setting up a pizza oven
that I have on my deck as well.
From, you know, looking up different ingredients
for a dish I want to make,
whether it be out outside or inside.
Whether I want to, you know,
do some shopping on Amazon or Target.
There's so many different things
that I've been able to use Aira for and get information.
I'm sorry, Everette, you actually used it
to help set up some medical equipment, didn't you?
I did, I did.
I have a CPAP machine and it's completely inaccessible
and it's all just this digital screen and nothing else.
And so I had to go through all the different settings
and Aira was able to help me do that.
You know, it's pretty interesting.
We talk about the other apps
that you mentioned and what they do.
I think what makes Aira stand apart
is the trained visual interpreters are very professional.
If I had a real life paid assistant
that was at my beck and call, that's kind of what it's like.
So whenever I need something read to me on the go,
it's just a simple tap on an app, on a call button
and I'm there talking with a live agent
who's professional, who's gonna get to the point
of what I want done.
And I could chit-chat with them if I want to,
but they're not there to do any of that.
They're not there to judge me.
It's a whole different experience
than anything else I can describe.
And that's why I feel like the service is so valuable.
Yeah, it really is a freeing thing,
what you said about you can chit-chat but you don't have to
and the person is there to do whatever that task is
with you and you're sort of directing that.
And it's so nice because with friends or family,
or one of the examples I always think about
is getting through the airport.
I used to need to get assistance
because I didn't wanna miss my plane
and, you know, I felt like could I do this on my own?
Maybe, but I would just prefer a human to be with me.
But depending on who was with me,
they might have wanted to do things differently than I did.
And so that freedom of I'm calling this trained agent
and I'm able to say, "Yes, I do wanna know
"about the food that I'm passing on our way to the gate,"
or no, "I'm really in a hurry.
"All I want you to do is give me directions."
And there's no hurt feelings or any of that.
It is, oh, you're directing me
in how you want this service, and off we go.
Yeah, it's pretty amazing
going through the airport.
I was just like you, and I travel quite a bit
and I really was a bit frustrated
having to wait for someone when I got there
to have someone help me, you know, through
and find my gate to go through security and all that.
And when Aira came along, it was completely freeing
and I can just walk right in, go right to security
and never miss a beat.
Go and find a Starbucks, find a restaurant if I want to.
Which is great.
Yes, yes.
Yeah, and having that freedom to,
"Oh, there's the Starbucks.
"Now if I don't have the menu memorized,
"I've got my assistant there
"who can read that to me and off we go."
Exactly.
So what's amazing to me is
that we've gone a few minutes
and somehow AI has not come up.
I really feel like every conversation I have
over the past few months or so has somehow involved AI
because it's become such a big thing.
And AI is actually right there in the Aira name.
It's the first two letters.
So I know it's always been sort of in the plan,
but over the past year or so,
it's become a much more prominent thing.
So, in a couple of different ways actually.
Let's start then with Access AI.
What exactly is this and why might you use it
as opposed to chatting with a human?
So Access AI is built into our app
and it's basically our way
of giving you image description.
So much like the other apps out there
that do a very similar type of feature,
Access AI, you can take a picture
and get a response back from AI
that describes you the picture that you just took.
The neat thing is we've done some very creative things
that we think makes our product a little bit better.
A, it is free, you don't pay for it at all,
and so you don't have to worry about paying for that.
Anybody can use it at any time.
But we've built in some prompts that let the AI know
that this is a blind person that's taking the picture
and needs a little bit better of a description
that's detailed towards a blind individual.
We've also put in some neat things,
like if you want to share multiple photos,
like let's say you've taken four or five pictures
of your wonderful dog and you wanna get the best one,
well, you can put that in there and you can prompt the AI
to tell you which one looks the most clear,
which one is the best picture of all of the five.
And so it's a pretty neat thing.
It can help you label all of your photos in your phone.
And what else am I missing, Jenine?
Oh, goodness.
The big thing that we just added
was verification with an agent,
so one of our visual interpreters.
So you can now, if you're just not sure,
you've got an image, you've got a description
and you think, "Wait, is that correct?
"I'm not sure."
You can verify that with
one of our visual interpreters between calls.
They take those verifications,
they look to tell you if the AI is correct
and if it's not, they're going to correct
whatever that error is and let you know.
And this is really important
if you do something like take a COVID test,
please verify those results with a live human.
You can also connect directly to
an Aira visual interpreter from inside Access AI
and that interpreter will be able to see
everything that you've done with the AI tool.
And so, you know, you can do that as well.
Yeah, really great feature
because as awesome as AI is,
it can get things wrong at times.
And so it's one of those trust but verify things
where if it is essential that you have
that information correct, you know,
if it's not something subjective or whatever it is,
just reach out and get that info from a human
right there in the same app.
So Everette, you touched a little bit earlier on,
Aira is a paid service,
but there's a lot that you do
to minimize what users need to pay
'cause I think we're all in very different situations
and what we can afford is different from person to person.
And so I'm wondering if we can talk about that a bit more.
We will of course have a link to Aira
and some of those payment plans
and descriptions of what they are.
But for all of these tasks that people are doing,
Aira's looking at partnerships
to make those free or very low cost.
So why don't we talk about some
of those recent access offers, which is what you call them.
So things that people can do
and have access to Aira
without needing to pay for those minutes.
Sure.
We're really proud of our access partners
and Jenine is doing a marvelous job of highlighting them
with our podcast each month.
So I may forget one and Jenine,
just, you know, if I forget one, let me know.
On a retail level, we have partnerships
with Walmart right now.
We have a pilot with Walmart
and we're hoping it will continue
to be a full-time access offer
throughout the year and years to come.
So you can use Aira for free
at any Walmart right now in the United States
or at walmart.com.
So, you know, just pull up the app.
The app automatically tells you you're at a Walmart store
and this is a free Aira access location
and you can use Aira for free
for as long as you want in the store or online.
And then Target is another access offer.
Target is a full-fledged service
and will continue to do that.
And so you can use Target both in Target stores or online.
We've partnered with lots of museums throughout the country.
Some of the biggest ones,
the Smithsonians in Washington DC,
Natural History Museum here in Utah.
There's museums, a big one in Chicago
that I'm forgetting the name of.
Oh, Shedd Aquarium, yeah.
Thank you.
Yeah, Shedd Aquarium, yeah.
There's just so many,
there's probably close to 100 museums across the country
that you can use it at across the country
and we're growing all the time.
Many airports across the country, you can use it for free.
And the neat thing about an airport
is you can pull up the app usually when you're in the car
and you've just pulled into the airport vicinity
and it'll automatically notify you
that you are in an Aira access location
and you're at the airport and you can use it for free there.
Gosh, what are the things that I'm forgetting, Jenine?
We've got a couple cities, in fact.
The city of Mesa, Arizona, for example,
is an Aira access location
for all of their public facilities.
The state of Colorado.
Can you imagine an entire state?
Well, all of the state facilities in Colorado
including their state parks,
which is pretty amazing to me
'cause they've got some
absolutely incredible state parks there.
But all of those are Aira access locations
and then we also have offers from different states
with their blindness rehab state organizations.
And so if you are a client of a state rehab organization,
you may wanna check with them
to see if they can provide Aira
as part of your rehabilitation plan
and adjustment to blindness plan.
-: Yeah, there's like states like Alabama,
Ohio, Texas, just to name a few.
Yeah.
Yeah, and what's cool is if you're thinking,
"Well, how do I figure out if the thing I want to do
"is an access offer?"
There's actually a spot right there in the app
where you can browse all of those things
and go, "Yay, my airport is an access location."
Which mine finally is as of I think about a year ago
and very thankful for that.
So we have primarily talked about Aira,
I think we have at least implied that this is a thing
that you use from your smartphone,
but there are actually a number of ways
that people can use Aira
beyond an iPhone or an Android device.
I know a blind shell is one of those things.
So if you're not into that
lovely flat piece of glass touch screen
and you have a blind shell, you'll be able to use it there.
What are some other places that people can access Aira?
Some other platforms, I guess?
Well, first and foremost,
yeah, desktop application.
So you can, it's a pretty simple thing.
It's not an app you download or anything,
it's just simply a website that you go to.
Explorer, E-X-P-L-O-R-E-R.aira, A-I-R-A.io
and you can log in using your same login credentials
and you can use Aira on the desktop.
You can work with a trained visual interpreter
if you want to share your screen.
So that would be like if you
are having trouble with the website or something
and you just need someone to maybe click the mouse for you
or show you where something is,
that would be the kind of thing
that you could do on that desktop app.
Yep, that is exactly right.
Great.
And then we also offer Aira
with the Envision Glasses.
So if you're an Envision Glasses user, you can use Aira.
It is available on that platform.
Then we have also figured out a way
to offer Aira on the Meta glasses.
So we don't have a direct partnership with Meta.
We would love to get one at some point,
but our engineering team is pretty resourceful
and pretty phenomenal and they have figured out
a workaround and it's really pretty awesome
because now you're using those glasses.
That's great.
And I know we get so, so many calls
about Meta glasses specifically.
Oh, I bet.
As Everette said, it's a really easy process
to have that hands-free access, which is so nice,
whether it's on Envision or on the Meta glasses
to get everything that you would normally do on your phone
and now you're sort of wearing it on your face
so it's very convenient.
Gosh, we've covered a ton of stuff
and if your head is spinning,
then, you know, we here at Hadley
and certainly Aira is here too
to answer those questions for you.
So don't be afraid to reach out and say,
"Can Aira do this?"
Or, "I was a little confused about
"how I might go about tackling this particular task."
But we have covered a lot.
Maybe we've missed something though,
so we'll just do kind of a final thoughts
sort of thing from each of you.
So whether we've missed something
or whether there's just something
that you want people to take away from this.
A lot of times people are hesitant
to jump into something new.
'Cause at least speaking for myself, I don't like change
and, you know, it feels a little uncomfortable
to ask for help at times as well.
So any final thoughts that you would leave people with
if they're on the fence and haven't tried Aira yet?
Jenine, let's start with you.
Well, I have two thoughts for you
and the first one very quickly
is that Aira gives you autonomy.
So I'm not saying you're never
going to need your friends or family,
it just means that you have the choice
of where you get your visual assistance and how you get it.
The other thing I want to say is
that Everette's team in customer care,
if all of this is making your head spin, as Ricky said,
they are amazing at walking you through technical issues,
at helping you get set up with things like the Meta glasses.
So if you ever have a question, please call them.
Excellent.
Thanks, Jenine.
How about you, Everette?
I echo everything Jenine just said.
The thing that I would just kind of try to reiterate is
it is a very easy product to use.
I know people get so intimidated
by all the different technology tools that are out there
and Aira is one tool of many,
but Aira can provide a lot of information
where if you didn't feel comfortable
using all the different apps that are out there,
Aira can meet a lot of those needs.
We have worked very hard
with the blind and low vision community.
We have a number of blind advisors,
testers that are always using
and testing any new feature we have
to try to keep it very simple,
very easy to use, intuitive.
So it just makes sense.
And I've watched so many blind people over the years
that are a little intimidated by technology
and once they get the app open and they try it,
they go, "Oh, that really wasn't that hard.
"That was much easier than I thought it would be."
And then they start using the product
more and more and more.
And so I urge people to give it a try
and let us know if you have any questions
and we'll be happy to help you.
Wonderful and you're so right about that.
That first call, once you get that
first call under your belt, it's like,
"You know, that really wasn't so bad.
"I was nervous to speak to a person
"or I wasn't sure I could find
the button to call or whatever it is."
And once you've done it once
you kind of realize this is a tool
that can fit in my daily life and help me with things.
Thank you both so much, Jenine and Everette,
for stopping by, spending a little time talking about Aira.
It's clear that both of you really love what you do.
I think being customers-first
and then having the opportunity to kind of join the team
and add your expertise to a thing that you already love,
wonderful stuff.
Thanks again.
We appreciate having you.
Thank you, Ricky.
Thank you for having us
and thank you for everything Hadley does.
It's a wonderful service you guys provide.
Absolutely.
We appreciate that.
Thank you.
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