American Council of the Blind Partners With Visual Aid Company Orcam

The American Council of the Blind (ACB) has signed a cooperative agreement with Jerusalem-based visual aid company OrCam Technologies Ltd., ACB announced Sunday. As part of the agreement, OrCam devices will be available for sale to ACB members at a special discount. The financial details of the agreement were not disclosed.

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OrCam’s device, MyEye2, is designed to help visually impaired people “read.” The finger-sized device, fitted with a camera and a microphone and clipped onto glasses, discreetly reads printed and digital text aloud to the person wearing it. While the device uses a camera, it does not store any of the information it reads, thereby maintaining user privacy, Matan Bar-Noy, OrCam’s director of business development, told Calcalist in an April interview.

Jerusalem-based OrCam was founded in 2010 by Amnon Shashua and Ziv Aviram, the founders of autonomous vehicle technology company Mobileye B.V., sold to Intel in 2017 for $15.3 billion. OrCam has raised more than $130 million to date and employs approximately 250 people, according to Pitchbook data.

OrCam also develops a device it calls MyMe, which uses machine vision algorithms to identify people, providing information such as a person's name and when and where you last met that person. MyMe can also read texts. In a networking situation, it can automatically scan and sync a business card or name tag.