eVisa aims to improve the mobility of visually impaired people using an innovative device that senses and understands a person’s environment in 3D. This project will allow for incremental evaluations of the device.

Visually impaired people experience autonomy-related problems due to loss of their central and/or peripheral visual field, which impacts mobility, spatial orientation or ability to identify location. The standard rehabilitation procedures remain highly context-dependent, with obvious consequences in self-perceived security, restricted social engagement and auto-exclusion. This implies an urgent need for more flexible approaches.

Team

The following partners are involved in this project: Fondation Asile des aveugles et Atomic Energy, Alternative Energies Commission and StreetLab.

The project

The eVisa project is developing a device for 3D sensing and understanding of the immediate environment to ease visually impaired people’s lives by improving their mobility. The device uses smart sensing technology, which integrates current information, data analysis and standard strategies that are already in place.

The main point of the EIT Health supported eVisa project is to assess the usability of the smart sensing technology. Incremental evaluations will be conducted with targeted users, who have different kinds and levels of vision deficiency, up to complete blindness. These assessments are expected to help increase the usefulness of the device.

The goal is to use the project’s results lead to the creation of a start-up in the short term, followed by relatively rapid access to the market afterwards.

Impact

According to the WHO, more than 2.5 million people are blind in Europe and and 23.8 million people suffer from low-vision. eVisa will have a big impact on visually impaired people, improving and maintaining their social engagement and helping them to safely geo-locate and move independently in various places, outdoors or indoors.

Why this is an EIT Health project

Because it empowers patients, this project is in keeping with EIT Health’s mission of promoting patient-centric care. By helping vison-impaired people to live more independent, ordinary lives in their homes, this project promotes active ageing and is also in line with the EIT Health Focus Area of “Bringing Care Home”.