Aira Makes Impression @ Dining in the Dark Event Hosted by Foundation Fighting Blindness
Aira was thrilled to be part of the Foundation Fighting Blindness (FFB) ¨Dining in the Dark¨ event recently where, with like-minded folks, we shared our passion for bringing assistive technology to the blind and low-vision community!
This included telling participants about our plans and vision for Aira (formerly known as KastEye/vEye), which garnered much interest from attendees. In fact, we had many who tested out our product and gave us valuable feedback. We were even given a shout-out on FFB’s Denver Chapter homepage!
Aira is an innovative technological service that is designed to help blind and low-vision users gain independence — serving in essence as a visual interpreter and navigator for users. In doing so, the product provides personalized assistance from a network of trained certified agents, plus family, friends, and volunteers. Our agents use a real-time interactive cloud-based dashboard purpose-built to process live data streams from cameras, GPS, and other sensor systems from wearable platforms such as Google Glass and Vuzix.
We were honored to be at the Foundation Fighting Blindness event to share information on Aira, and we look forward to partnering with FFB in the future.
In case you are not familiar with FFB, it is a national nonprofit organization focused on finding preventions, treatments and cures for retinal diseases, which affect over 10 million Americans. FFB’s ¨Dining in the Dark¨ event is a distinctive sensory awareness experience in which guests participate in an unforgettable dining adventure, in complete darkness. To get first-hand insight into the challenges of the blind community, diners wear special light-blocking masks and eat their entrée using only their heightened senses of smell, sound, taste and touch.
At the event we were also extremely fortunate to meet Larry Bock, a noted serial entrepreneur who became impressed with Aira’s product demonstration during the gathering. In his career, Larry, who is visually impaired, has founded, co-founded or financed 40 high-tech and life science companies such as Illumina, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, and Onyx Pharmaceuticals from concept to a total aggregate market capitalization in excess of $70B. [Editor’s note: In the weeks following the FFB meeting, we were very excited when Larry joined the Aira team as Executive Chairman, where his insight and experience will provide us with a clear vision to succeed!]
Adding further to the positive outcomes from the FFB event, we had approximately 10 prospects sign up for experiments during the affair, and our team collected much valuable product reaction and other useful data. Such information will serve us well as we look to sign up additional beta testers and subscribers. Beta trials are scheduled to begin in Summer 2015. Please visit the Aira website at aira.io if you are interested in participating in these trials.
