It’s been just a few months since Meta announced that it would be opening up its smart glasses platform to third-party developers. But one startup at CES is already showing how Glasses can help power an interesting set of accessibility features.
Hapware has created Alley, a haptic wristband that, when paired with Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, can help people understand the facial expressions and other non-verbal cues of the people they’re talking to. The company says the device could help blind, low-vision or neurodivergent people unlock a type of communication that wouldn’t otherwise be available.
The Ellie is a somewhat chunky wristband that can vibrate in specific patterns on your wrist to correspond with the facial expressions and body language of the person you’re talking to. It uses the computer vision capabilities of the Meta Ray-Ban glasses to stream video of your conversation to the accompanying app, which uses an algorithm to detect facial expressions and gestures.
Users can customize which expressions and gestures they want to detect in the app, which also provides a way for people to learn to distinguish between different patterns. Hapware CEO Jack Walters said that in its initial testing, people have been able to learn some patterns in a matter of minutes. The company has also tried to make them comfortable. “A drop of a jaw can feel like a jaw dropping, a wave feels like side-to-side haptics,” he explains.
The app is also able to use meta AI to give vocal cues about people’s expressions, although Dr. Brian Duarte, CTO of Hapware, told me that it can be a little distracting to talk to people when the assistant is murmuring in your ear. Duarte, who has been blind since a motorcycle accident at age 18, told me he prefers Alley over other accessibility features of Meta AI, like Live AI. “That just lets me know there’s a person in front of me,” he explains. “It won’t tell me whether you’re smiling or not. You have to prompt it every time, it just won’t tell you things.”
Hapware has begun taking pre-orders for Alley, which starts at $359 for a wristband or $637 for a wristband plus a one-year subscription to the app (subscription is required and will otherwise cost $29 per month). A pair of Ray-Ban Meta glasses are also not included, although the Meta is also building several of its own accessibility features into the device.
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