James Dyson Award winner in Canada makes touchscreens accessible for the visually impaired

University of Waterloo mechatronics engineering graduates Craig Loewen and Lior Lustgarten developed WatVision, a system that helps the visually impaired navigate our now touchscreen-reliant existence. And this has garnered the top prize of Canadian leg of the annual James Dyson Award. WatVision makes use of three things: a smartphone app, industry standard detection markers placed on each corner of a touchscreen, and a ring worn by the user. The smartphone’s camera will identify the position of the touch screen by locating the four detection markers. It’ll then take a photo of the screen and download it onto the phone. Once the user pints to a button on the screen, with the ring-wearing finger, the app will find the ring and use the downloaded image to read the text out loud.

The international design award gives the team $3,000 in funding to help develop the project. WatVision is joined by two national runner-ups from the University of Toronto. One is for a project called Printem, which is a smart film that lets users go from design to physical circuit in just three minutes—all using a specially developed film that can be used on a home-office printer. The other is called Revertome, which is a surgical instrument that can treat severe burns by delivering cells in a bioink using a compact handheld bioprinter. The three teams will move onto the next stage of JDA, where Dyson engineers will select the top 20 international projects. The international winner will receive $50,000 for the students and $8,500 for the student’s university department. Two international runners-up will get $8,500 each.