World Sight Day: This is how Alexa helps the blind and visually impaired in everyday life

• Alexa offers many functions to make everyday life easier for people with visual impairments.
• For World Sight Day, Amazon wants to draw more people’s attention to them.
• In addition to audio films, Alexa also has a number of other useful functions for the visually impaired.

October 13th is World Sight Day, which aims to raise awareness about the prevention and cure of blindness and other eye diseases. Amazon is also involved and is presenting Alexa functions that are intended to make everyday life easier for those affected.

Audio films together with the ÖRR

Already in 2021 Amazon started a cooperation with the public service broadcaster. The company is working with ARD, ZDF and Arte on audio films that can be easily played via Alexa. This is an audio description of films that briefly describes the central events, gestures, facial expressions and scenery.

More accessibility features

In addition to audio films, Alexa can of course be useful in many other areas of everyday life. As part of World Sight Day, Amazon has highlighted some of these features:

• Entertainment: In addition to the audio film feature, music, podcasts and audio books can also be played with simple voice commands.
• Retrieving information: Of course, Alexa can also be used to obtain information about the weather or current events, for example.
• Controlling smart home devices: Alexa can also be paired with smart home products to control them.
• Drop-In function: With the “Drop-In” command, an audio conference can be started with other Alexa devices in the system, which makes communication with caregivers, for example, much easier.
• VoiceView: This feature makes it possible to control the device with gestures and have the content read aloud by Alexa.
• Color inversion: On Alexa devices with a screen (e.g. Echo Show), the screen can swap color values ​​to help with color blindness.

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