The Aira App: On Demand, Expert Assistance

Using the camera on your device and a trained person on the other end of the call, it's easy to get access to high quality visual information, whether you're choosing items at the grocery store or trying to find out what mischief your pet is up to now. In this episode, Everette Bacon and Jenine Stanley join us to discuss services from Aira. I'm Ricky Enger and this is Hadley Presents. Welcome to the show. Hi, Ricky. Hi, Ricky.

It is so awesome to have you both and neither of you is a stranger to podcasting. There is an Airacast as well and we'll have a link to that in the show notes of course. But for people who have not heard either of you before, let's just do some quick intros. So Everette, let's start with you. Tell us a bit about you. Thanks, Ricky. My name is Everette Bacon. I am a Chief of Blindness Initiatives here at Aira, but I was a user of the product pretty much since its inception.

Awesome, thanks Everette. And Janine, how about you? So I am Janine Stanley and my title is Director of Customer Success and Engagement. And what I do is interact of course with our customers, primarily through our two podcasts. We have Airacast and we have Access Matters. Perfect. Well again, it's wonderful to have you both and it's interesting because I feel like on this show Aira gets mentioned at least every second or third episode and it is such an incredible tool in the toolbox.

And when we mention it, we do say that, but we've never really had a chance to dive into what Aira is. So I'm wondering if one or both of you wants to just give a sort of quick elevator pitch for what Aira is. So Aira is access to visual information on demand from a trained visual interpreter. Basically what that means is through your smartphone or a desktop application, you can get access to visual information.

So the trained visual interpreter can see through your camera and can give you information. They can help provide you with navigation assistance to get you to and from your location. They can help you do any kind of visual assistance you might need, helping you at shopping. I'll add to what Everette said with one of our secret sauce ingredients here and that is security and privacy and the ability to read and keep secure your personal information, such as health information, banking, et cetera.

So for those things that you don't really want maybe a volunteer or a family member or somebody like that to have access to on your behalf, we are here and we've got the protections in place both with our visual interpreters who sign a number of confidentiality agreements and also in the background with our software. Yeah, all really good points and I think you've touched on some of the things in my next question, but we can expand on that a little bit.

You know, I think people, when they are new to this and they finally find someone who's giving resources, they get kind of inundated with all of these resources. And so it's like, "Aira, be my eyes, look out, seeing AI." And a person is thinking, "Well, I have no idea "which of these does which thing." And it feels really overwhelming and so sometimes people just don't do anything because it's difficult to figure out what's the right tool for this particular task.

So I'm wondering if you could just go through some of the things, whether they are mundane or maybe some really creative uses for Aira that you've seen people do. Yeah, probably one of the biggest ones that I hear is finding things that you've dropped. That's a big one. And I think it's interesting, Ricky, that one of the first reactions that people have is, "I'm a little nervous about calling "because I'm not sure, "I don't want them to see my messy house."

Trust us, but we've seen everything, it just- You know, it doesn't matter, the visual interpreters are here to help you. And so things like picking up pet messes, that's a big one. Lots of reading. You know, I was thinking of so many different things I've used Aira for, from helping put together a computer desk to putting together a table and chairs that are on my deck from setting up a pizza oven that I have on my deck as well.

From, you know, looking up different ingredients for a dish I want to make, whether it be out outside or inside. Whether I want to, you know, do some shopping on Amazon or Target. There's so many different things that I've been able to use Aira for and get information. I'm sorry, Everette, you actually used it to help set up some medical equipment, didn't you? I did, I did. I have a CPAP machine and it's completely inaccessible and it's all just this digital screen and nothing else.

And so I had to go through all the different settings and Aira was able to help me do that. You know, it's pretty interesting. We talk about the other apps that you mentioned and what they do. I think what makes Aira stand apart is the trained visual interpreters are very professional. If I had a real life paid assistant that was at my beck and call, that's kind of what it's like.

So whenever I need something read to me on the go, it's just a simple tap on an app, on a call button and I'm there talking with a live agent who's professional, who's gonna get to the point of what I want done. And I could chit-chat with them if I want to, but they're not there to do any of that. They're not there to judge me. It's a whole different experience than anything else I can describe. And that's why I feel like the service is so valuable.

Yeah, it really is a freeing thing, what you said about you can chit-chat but you don't have to and the person is there to do whatever that task is with you and you're sort of directing that. And it's so nice because with friends or family, or one of the examples I always think about is getting through the airport. I used to need to get assistance because I didn't wanna miss my plane and, you know, I felt like could I do this on my own? Maybe, but I would just prefer a human to be with me.

But depending on who was with me, they might have wanted to do things differently than I did. And so that freedom of I'm calling this trained agent and I'm able to say, "Yes, I do wanna know "about the food that I'm passing on our way to the gate," or no, "I'm really in a hurry. "All I want you to do is give me directions." And there's no hurt feelings or any of that. It is, oh, you're directing me in how you want this service, and off we go. Yeah, it's pretty amazing going through the airport.

I was just like you, and I travel quite a bit and I really was a bit frustrated having to wait for someone when I got there to have someone help me, you know, through and find my gate to go through security and all that. And when Aira came along, it was completely freeing and I can just walk right in, go right to security and never miss a beat. Go and find a Starbucks, find a restaurant if I want to. Which is great. Yes, yes. Yeah, and having that freedom to, "Oh, there's the Starbucks.

"Now if I don't have the menu memorized, "I've got my assistant there "who can read that to me and off we go." Exactly. So what's amazing to me is that we've gone a few minutes and somehow AI has not come up. I really feel like every conversation I have over the past few months or so has somehow involved AI because it's become such a big thing. And AI is actually right there in the Aira name. It's the first two letters.

So I know it's always been sort of in the plan, but over the past year or so, it's become a much more prominent thing. So, in a couple of different ways actually. Let's start then with Access AI. What exactly is this and why might you use it as opposed to chatting with a human? So Access AI is built into our app and it's basically our way of giving you image description.

So much like the other apps out there that do a very similar type of feature, Access AI, you can take a picture and get a response back from AI that describes you the picture that you just took. The neat thing is we've done some very creative things that we think makes our product a little bit better. A, it is free, you don't pay for it at all, and so you don't have to worry about paying for that. Anybody can use it at any time.

But we've built in some prompts that let the AI know that this is a blind person that's taking the picture and needs a little bit better of a description that's detailed towards a blind individual.

We've also put in some neat things, like if you want to share multiple photos, like let's say you've taken four or five pictures of your wonderful dog and you wanna get the best one, well, you can put that in there and you can prompt the AI to tell you which one looks the most clear, which one is the best picture of all of the five. And so it's a pretty neat thing. It can help you label all of your photos in your phone. And what else am I missing, Jenine? Oh, goodness.

The big thing that we just added was verification with an agent, so one of our visual interpreters. So you can now, if you're just not sure, you've got an image, you've got a description and you think, "Wait, is that correct? "I'm not sure." You can verify that with one of our visual interpreters between calls. They take those verifications, they look to tell you if the AI is correct and if it's not, they're going to correct whatever that error is and let you know.

And this is really important if you do something like take a COVID test, please verify those results with a live human. You can also connect directly to an Aira visual interpreter from inside Access AI and that interpreter will be able to see everything that you've done with the AI tool. And so, you know, you can do that as well. Yeah, really great feature because as awesome as AI is, it can get things wrong at times.

And so it's one of those trust but verify things where if it is essential that you have that information correct, you know, if it's not something subjective or whatever it is, just reach out and get that info from a human right there in the same app.

So Everette, you touched a little bit earlier on, Aira is a paid service, but there's a lot that you do to minimize what users need to pay 'cause I think we're all in very different situations and what we can afford is different from person to person. And so I'm wondering if we can talk about that a bit more. We will of course have a link to Aira and some of those payment plans and descriptions of what they are.

But for all of these tasks that people are doing, Aira's looking at partnerships to make those free or very low cost. So why don't we talk about some of those recent access offers, which is what you call them. So things that people can do and have access to Aira without needing to pay for those minutes. Sure. We're really proud of our access partners and Jenine is doing a marvelous job of highlighting them with our podcast each month.

So I may forget one and Jenine, just, you know, if I forget one, let me know. On a retail level, we have partnerships with Walmart right now. We have a pilot with Walmart and we're hoping it will continue to be a full-time access offer throughout the year and years to come. So you can use Aira for free at any Walmart right now in the United States or at walmart.com. So, you know, just pull up the app.

The app automatically tells you you're at a Walmart store and this is a free Aira access location and you can use Aira for free for as long as you want in the store or online. And then Target is another access offer. Target is a full-fledged service and will continue to do that. And so you can use Target both in Target stores or online. We've partnered with lots of museums throughout the country. Some of the biggest ones, the Smithsonians in Washington DC, Natural History Museum here in Utah.

There's museums, a big one in Chicago that I'm forgetting the name of. Oh, Shedd Aquarium, yeah. Thank you. Yeah, Shedd Aquarium, yeah. There's just so many, there's probably close to 100 museums across the country that you can use it at across the country and we're growing all the time. Many airports across the country, you can use it for free.

And the neat thing about an airport is you can pull up the app usually when you're in the car and you've just pulled into the airport vicinity and it'll automatically notify you that you are in an Aira access location and you're at the airport and you can use it for free there. Gosh, what are the things that I'm forgetting, Jenine? We've got a couple cities, in fact. The city of Mesa, Arizona, for example, is an Aira access location for all of their public facilities. The state of Colorado.

Can you imagine an entire state? Well, all of the state facilities in Colorado including their state parks, which is pretty amazing to me 'cause they've got some absolutely incredible state parks there. But all of those are Aira access locations and then we also have offers from different states with their blindness rehab state organizations.

And so if you are a client of a state rehab organization, you may wanna check with them to see if they can provide Aira as part of your rehabilitation plan and adjustment to blindness plan.