Amazon’s ‘Show and Tell’ feature will make grocery shopping easier for people with vision impairments

Amazon has introduced a new feature for visually impaired people called ‘Show and Tell’. It helps to identify groceries while going for shopping or even sitting at home. The product needs to be held up to the Echo Show Camera and ask Alexa what it is. Machine learning technologies and advanced computer vision has been used for this. People from the disabled community says that this is going to be revolutionary.

Technological advancements have made daily life tasks easier for people with disabilities. Gadgets with latest apps and services makes everything easily available at the fingertip. Amazon, which is very popular across the world, has now come up with a new feature for visually impaired people. Their latest Show and Tell will make identifying groceries easier for visually impaired people. There has been a great response from the community and they think that this is going to be truly revolutionary.

All that the user needs to do is hold up an item to the Echo Show Camera and ask Alexa what it is for which they will get an instant answer. This can be used while going grocery shopping too. So whether you want to identify coffee, tea, vegetables, pulses or fruits, ‘Show and Tell’ is going to help the user. Machine learning technologies and advanced computer vision has been used for creating this unique feature.

Maitreya Shah, a visually impaired lawyer and disability rights activist, says the new feature will enable independent living for people who are blind and low vision.

I have heard about this and already tried Alexa and Amazon Echo. I feel this is essential in day to day lives of visually impaired people. No matter how independent we are, we definitely need sighted assistance at times. If this works like how the makers claim, it will be relief to a lot of visually impaired people. So when you purchase Amazon, you get your dose of entertainment and also such helpful features. –Maitreya Shah, Lawyer

Amazon had already stated that they believe in inclusion and introduction of ‘Show and Tell’ is indeed a great step towards it. The makers decided to create something innovative like this after a lot of demand from visually impaired people from across the world because identifying a product can be difficult most of the times.

Amazon team had collaborated with Vista Centre for the Blind and Visually Impaired at the USA before kick-starting ‘Show and Tell’. They even did an extensive study to look into how well this will work out. “Excited to finally announce this!!! Amazon today introduced a new feature called Show and Tell, which helps blind and low vision customers with an Echo Show smart display identify common pantry goods that can be difficult to distinguish”, tweeted Amazon’s accessibility marketing head KR Liu.

“This is a great use of technology to assist people in a very real way. Bravo @Amazon! Echo Show camera can identify items thanks to Alexa’s Show and Tell”, tweeted Tim.

Also Read: App called Suno-Be My Ears aims to bridge communication barriers between deaf & hearing people

Watch in Sign Language