Envision Glasses: Alice’s Top Features

Instant Text does exactly what it says in the name: gives you instant access to text.

Once activated, the Envision Glasses will read aloud whatever text the camera is capturing. This could be anything from product labels, to A4 letters, to posters on walls.

You do not need to take any pictures in this mode: just present the camera with some text and the glasses will read it aloud.

Alice says: “I’ve used various devices to scan text, including my iPhone, various desktop scanners and of course the Envision Glasses. The Envision Glasses are by far the best device I have used for reading text. With the Envision Glasses, I have, for the first time, been able to identify my skincare products completely independently. I just point the packaging at the camera and the glasses read out what the product is within seconds. Because of the shape of the product and the very small text, this is something I’ve never been able to do with my smartphone. Using the Envision Glasses has given me access to even more text without sighted help.”

This feature is another way to access text. However, the glasses will take a picture of the text before reading it aloud.

When you activate this feature, the glasses will help you position yourself and the document so that it can take the best picture and read all of the text on the page, through a feature called Smart Guidance. If you struggle using Smart Guidance, there is a tutorial on the glasses so that you can practise, without it actually taking any pictures.

The Scan Text feature also offers some advanced functions: you can export the document to the Envision AI app so that you can read it from within the app at a later date. There is also the Ask Envision feature (Open AI’s GPT-4 model powers this), allowing you to ask questions about the text that you have scanned. For example, you could ask for the vegetarian options on a menu, ask the date and time of a hospital appointment, or ask for the expiry date on a food package.

Alice says: “Being completely honest, I wasn’t a huge fan of the Scan Text feature, because I didn’t have the patience to position my document for the best results, and I was very happy just using the Instant Text feature. However, Envision introduced the Ask Envision feature, that was a complete game-changer.

When I tried this feature for the first time, I was blown away. I asked a series of questions about a letter I had received. The letter contained a username and password to access a website, so I asked ‘What is the username and password?’ and the glasses answered purely by giving me the username and password. I then asked ‘Who has signed this letter?’ and it told me the name of the person at the bottom of the letter.

Ask Envision has given me a reason to persevere with scanning documents and I cannot wait to experiment with it even more. This is the first time that, without sighted help, I have been able to scan a document and easily and quickly find the information I need as opposed to having to scroll through the entire document.”

This feature allows you to select an object from a list, and the glasses will help you to detect that object. The list of objects you can identify includes bed, cat, chair, door and laptop.

Prior to version 2.2.0 of the glasses, you would hear a sound when the glasses detected the selected object. However, version 2.2.0 introduces major changes. When you select an object, the glasses will now announce the name of the object, followed by its position. The position is indicated through clock-notation. To give an example, if you select laptop and the laptop is to the right of the camera, the glasses would say ‘laptop 3 o’clock.’

Alice says: “I wouldn’t really use this feature for any particular reason. It’s just one I like because it’s a bit of fun. I’m really happy to see that Envision has refined this feature so that it gives positional information about the object. There have been many occasions when the glasses would indicate the selected object was visible, but I’d then discover that it wasn’t directly in front of me. Having this additional information makes the feature more useful.

When testing, it was more accurate detecting certain objects compared to others. For example I selected Laptop and it gave me the position of my laptop accurately, but when I selected Door, it struggled to identify the doors as easily.”

This isn’t a feature you would find within the menu. Instead, it runs throughout the glasses.
As mentioned above, you can use Voice Commands to activate menu items, as an alternative to navigating using the touchpad.
For example, you can just say ‘Open instant Text’ and that feature will open. You may also say ‘change volume’ and it will open the slider so you can adjust the volume.

To use Voice Commands, hold down the hinge button and you will hear a tone. This is exactly the same as when you want to ask a question about a piece of text when using the Scan Text feature.

Alice says: “Using voice commands is a great alternative to using the touchscreen. The touchpad is great, however it is very small and it can be a bit cumbersome to do multiple swipes to access a menu item, especially if it is at the bottom or in the ‘more features’ menu. Using voice commands means I can just open a menu item quickly, without having to locate it. It’s especially useful for going from one feature to another, for example Instant Text to Scan Text.”/

First and foremost, the Envision Glasses are hands-free, completely wireless, lightweight and portable.

If using them while out and about, you can connect them to your phone’s Wi-Fi hotspot.

The Envision Glasses have a wide range of features, giving you multiple tools on one device. You can use AI-powered features, as well as human support, giving you multiple methods of obtaining visual information.

Envision bring out new updates to the glasses regularly, to maintain existing features, and introduce new ones. This means that the glasses are constantly evolving.

There is, however, a caveat. When you purchase the Envision Glasses Read or Home Edition, you will only get feature updates free for a year. After that, you will need to subscribe. Maintenance updates are free for a lifetime, regardless of which edition you buy.

Envision also provides regular communications updates through social media, emails, and monthly webinars.

The Envision Glasses come with a hefty price tag. Excluding VAT, the Read Edition costs £1,799.00, the Home Edition costs £2,299.00, and the Professional Edition costs £2,999.00.

In order to start using the glasses, you need to set them up using the Envision AI app. However, the app is only available on iOS, and Android phones that give you access to the Play Store.

If you use a different operating system, or a specialist device running on Android such as the BlindShell phone, using the glasses will be more tricky. You could ask somebody who has iOS or a compatible Android device to download the Envision AI app and set up the glasses on your behalf, however, this will mean limitations. You will not be able to independently reorder menu items, and you will not be able to export text if using the Scan Text feature.

The Envision Glasses purely use audio output to communicate information. This means that they would not be suitable for somebody who relies on a different output method, such as braille.

The glasses also do not provide any haptic feedback or vibrations. Sounds and speech indicate information to the user.