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SoVi app makes printed material audible

How should you shop when you're blind? Meike Seidel investigated this question and developed an app that aims to make access to product information in the food sector easier, and not just for this particular target group.

With our eyes closed, many packages feel the same. Only images and text show us what is packaged. But how can you shop when you're blind? Meike Seidel investigated this question during her studies. And has developed an app that not only aims to make it easier for this particular target group to access product information in the food sector.

Meikel Seidel originally studied interior design. The problem of how to enable blind people to shop independently already preoccupied her back then. And so her master's thesis in her subsequent Design and Media degree programme at Hanover University of Applied Sciences and Arts was all about this, simplify the scanning of packaging and reproduce the information on it acoustically.

"I've been working in this field for eight years and won a Newcomer Innovation Award back in 2015 with the vision of fully encoding packaging to make it easier for blind people to scan and thus enable them to shop for their groceries independently." 

Meike Seidel

Display

At that time, this was still utopia. It was not until a year later that the US company Digimarc presented a new labelling technology, the Digital Watermark Code, DW Code for short. It is invisibly hidden in the colour print on the packaging and ensures that products are uniquely identified worldwide. As the code can carry a lot of other information that can be called up online, it also allows a new way of communicating with the end consumer.

Not only helpful for blind people

After graduating, Meike Seidel founded her own company SonicView and developed an app that reads the DW code as well as barcodes. Thanks to the full-surface coding with the digital watermark, products can be scanned while standing on the shelf without having to be touched or turned. "For visually impaired and blind people, the DW Code is a gift because they no longer have to search for the barcode on the packaging to scan a product."

But whether digital watermark or barcode, The smart SoVi app makes product information audible - via the voice output systems TalkBack and VoiceOver. Originally developed for blind people, it offers even more, as information on food packaging is becoming increasingly complex and confusing, making the small print difficult for many sighted people.

Users with allergies, intolerances, metabolic disorders or diabetes are also dependent on access to product information. They can Create personalised nutrition profiles in the SoVi app and then always receive the right information for them. Above all, however, the app provides accessibility for people with various forms of visual impairment. It is even Can be controlled via the electronic Braille display and then makes all content and information tactile and thus accessible for deafblind people.

The app accesses two databases: For each scan, SoVi first queries the verified GDSN data pool from Atrify. Manufacturers enter their product data here themselves and are obliged to keep it correct and up to date at all times. If this data pool does not contain any product data, the app accesses the open source database of OpenFoodFacts, in which every user can enter product information themselves, which is then available to everyone.

Meike Seidel recently became not only the founder of an IT start-up, but also a research project manager. In addition to providing access to product information, the aim is to make grocery shopping barrier-free for blind people, the ARGUS research project, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), was launched in August 2022 under the leadership of SonicView. The Institute for Consumer Informatics at Bonn Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences, the artificial intelligence start-up VAGO Solutions and the company Petanux are on board as joint partners. Together, they want to develop a smart digital agent: AI-controlled glasses that will help blind people find their way around shops, recognise products and provide information.

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