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Good practice Imported

Envision Glasses — AI-Powered Reading and Recognition Wearable for Blind Users, from The Hague

Netherlands · The Hague · See the Netherlands profile · See the The Hague profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 55% 72/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Founded in The Hague in 2017, Envision built AI software reading text in 60+ languages, recognising faces and describing scenes aloud, on smart glasses and a phone app. It reports 200,000+ customers globally and won Google's 2019 Best Accessibility App award.

200,000+
Customers globally
50,000+
Users in Netherlands, US, Japan, Germany
60+
Languages supported for text reading
Envision Glasses — AI-Powered Reading and Recognition Wearable for Blind Users, from The Hague

Details

Maturity
Established
Promoter
Envision (founded by Karthik Kannan and Karthik Mahadevan)
Period
2017–ongoing
Keywords
disability inclusion, assistive technology, artificial intelligence, wearables

Context

Envision, founded in The Hague in late 2017, builds AI software that reads text in more than 60 languages, recognises faces and describes scenes aloud for blind and low-vision users, shipped both as a smartphone app and embedded in smart glasses retailing at €2,999.

Results

The company reports over 200,000 customers globally, with more than 50,000 users concentrated in the Netherlands, the United States, Japan and Germany, and the Envision app won Google's Best Accessibility App award in 2019.

Implementation
Indicative cost
High (€500k–€5M)
Time to results
Long (> 3 years)
Staffing & skills
Envision product and engineering team

Conditions for success

  • shipping both a lower-cost smartphone app and premium hardware to widen the range of users who can afford access

Common failure modes

  • the €2,999 glasses hardware remains out of reach for most users in low-income settings

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Data sources

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