ATU766 – Right Hear with Idan Meir

Hi, this is Idan Meir. I’m the co-founder and CEO of RightHear, and this is your Assistive Technology Update.

Hello, and welcome to your Assistive Technology Update, a weekly dose of information that keeps you up to date on the latest developments in the field of technology, designed to assist individuals with disabilities and special needs. I’m your host, Josh Anderson with the INDATA Project at Easterseals Crossroads in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana. Welcome to episode 766 of Assistive Technology Update. It is scheduled to be released on January 30th, 2026. On today’s show, we’re super excited to welcome Idan Meir, co-founder and CEO of RightHear to the show to tell us all about RightHear and how it can help not only individuals with visual impairments, but also with businesses with making their places and their signs much more accessible.

As always, listeners, we thank you so much for taking time out of your day and we love to hear from you. If you ever have a question, comment, or somebody that make a great guest, please reach out. Send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org or call our listener line at (317) 721-7124. But for now, let’s go ahead and get on with the show. Today, listeners, we are joined by Idan to talk about RightHear and how they’re assisting to make indoor orientation more accessible for individuals with low vision or orientation challenges. And I, for one, cannot wait to learn all about it. Idan, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me here, Josh. It’s a pleasure.

Yeah, I am really excited to learn everything about RightHear, but before we do that, could you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?

Sure. So I’m Idan. I’m the co-founder and CEO of RightHear. I’m also a father of to three, Abigail, Rani and Adam. It’s eight, six, and one, and married to my best partner, Liat. Thanks to her, RightHear actually exists. She’s the driving power behind it all. I’m originally from Israel. I moved to the US just about four years ago. I’m here in Maryland, and I have horrible orientation skills, and that’s probably what led us to build RightHear, which we’re probably going to talk about today.

I always love to find out how things came to pass and everything else. And we’ll get into that in a minute, but first, I guess just start us off by just telling us what is RightHear.

Well, I guess the shortest way to describe it is talking science. A more sophisticated way would be audio format of signage, but basically what we’re doing is bringing an audio representation of visual signs. So we see signs everywhere we go, indoors and outdoors. And basically what RightHear does is bringing them voice. I always, Josh, actually I’d love to start with sharing two facts. I’m sure many of your listeners probably familiar with at least one of them, but when we talk about RightHear’s story, I usually share both of them. So the first one is that there are braille signs everywhere in the country, from Indiana to here to Maryland, whether if it’s a hospital, a shopping mall, a small restaurant, an airport, you name it, they’re all around us in the country. It’s an ADA requirement. Yeah, so there are braille signs everywhere. The other fact that, again, some of your listeners probably familiar with is that over 90% out of the blind community cannot read braille at all. So for those five to 10% who can read braille, it’s great that braille is out there, but finding those signs is a challenge by itself.

You need to know that there is a sign there in order to actually read it. And assuming you know to read braille and assuming you’ve been lucky to find the sign, you also need to be a little bit brave because who want to touch a public surface anyway, especially since COVID? And assuming you’re also brave, then you probably need to be very smart because the amount of information you’ll get out of this sign is probably one word or two. That’s it. Not much more. To me, we’re recording this January 2026. It’s unbelievable that we have braille signs everywhere, but we don’t have this in an audio format. And that’s exactly what RightHear is doing. RightHear is basically, it’s a free app, both Android and iPhone that gives our users audio descriptions of the space around them.

Nice, nice. And I love that you bring up the braille signs. I think of there’s a place not far from where I live and the restrooms, they have your normal kind of sign, shows the man, the woman, and has braille on it. And it’s on the door which swings in. So if you put the pressure on to actually feel the braille, you’ve already opened the door. So what you’re trying to figure out which one’s the men’s or the women’s, if you’re lucky enough to find the sign, you’ve already opened the door to either the right or the wrong ones. So you got a 50/50 chance of being correct, I guess.

Exactly. And I think I developed some weird obsession around specifically public restaurants because it’s a hygiene factor into this. I mean, I said before, you probably don’t want to touch a public surface, but you especially don’t want to touch a public surface around that area.

Yes, yes.

So having that in your own language, by the way, in audio, but in your own language is helpful, not just if you’re blind or visually impaired, helpful if you’re a tourist in that facility. Having it spoke out loud is not just, again, if you don’t see the sign or if you don’t speak the language, you might see the sign and you might do speak the language in that airport in that case, but you might have some hard time reading these texts that says baggage claim or whatever that is. So being able, again, to hear, dyslexia or other cognitive disabilities, so being able to hear that, that’s our focus, that’s the vision.

Most definitely. Most definitely. Well, and I mean, you kind of told me some of the idea, but I guess where did the original idea for RightHear come from?

Yeah. So as I said, I have horrible orientation skills. I’m this friend who always turned right and it’s obvious to turn left because we’ve just been there. And when we started RightHear, we thought that if we’ll be able to solve the orientation challenge to those that have most severe orientation challenges, and that’s how we came to think about the blind community, you ultimately will be able to solve it to basically anyone else. And then we didn’t know much about that community. My grandfather turned to be blind in the end of his life, but I didn’t know much about that disability. So we started to speak with the community.

I’ve got a friend who knows a friend, it was Tali and Ellie and others at the time, and they gave us feedback and we just fall in love with the impact it can create for people. They were literally saying, “Well, this can completely change my life.” And we’re like, “Yeah, we want to work on something like that.” It really was very exciting. And we were amazed with the opportunity. I mean, really, when you think about it, it’s unbelievable. Josh, just in the past year, it came even clearer to me what really is unbelievable around that is the emergency evacuations plan.

Oh yeah.

We had those events, unfortunately, in the past year. So in case of emergency, what is the evacuation plan for a person who’s blind or visually impaired?

Yeah. And around here, it’s kind of phone a friend. Not phone of friend, but I mean, at the same time, I always realize that I work in an organization that serves individuals with different disabilities, so we all look at things a whole lot differently. If you’re out in a public place, it’s sort of every person for themselves. And if you happen to be the person that needs that assistance, you may or may not have someone help.

Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. So we were started looking into that also, like the exit signs. In every door to every room in every hotel in the country, we’re talking about all the hotels rooms in the country, at the backside of it, you’ll find the evacuation plan. That’s great if you can actually see it.

Yeah.

So what if you don’t? There’s about, what? Eight million low vision in the country. So to me, it’s kind of unbelievable that it’s not obvious yet, but I believe it will become obvious. There’s more and more awareness around this topic, around the need for talking signs or audio format signage as a category. We all learned that… I usually give the digital accessibility as an example. Today, I think there’s a lot more work to be done in the digital sphere of website, et cetera. But I think from an awareness standpoint, if you would just pick someone out in the street and ask them, “Hey, do you think my website needs to be accessible?” They’ll probably tell you yes, and they also kind of know what you mean.

Yeah.

They might have heard of that. So the awareness has been established. Yes, there’s a lot more work to be done, but when it comes to the built environment and making the space more accessible specifically for the blind and visually impaired, it’s not there yet. And that’s another reason why I thank you, Josh, for having the stage today to talk about it.

No, and like I said, I’m excited to really dig in and learn about it. So I know it’s an app that I can put on my phone, Android or Apple. And then how does it work?

Yeah. So it’s a free app. First of all, I want to emphasize it’s a completely free app, no small [inaudible 00:09:22]. There’s indoors, outdoors, auto space, underwater, it’s free. It’s also anonymous. There’s no sign into the app so we won’t know who you are. Look, we all learned that if it’s a free app, you probably do something with our data. No, we don’t. We don’t know who you are. There’s no Facebook login or email or anything like that. So again, we think that accessibility is a human right and just like a calculator, you don’t need to… Just from the same perspective. So that’s an app. In the app, you’ll find the locations that are accessible for you and much more than that. But those that are accessible for you, you can simulate those locations before arriving there. The app can guide you to get there with outdoor GPS experience.

And once you’re actually at the facility, it will give you audio descriptions of that space. We do that thanks to two other components that are at the facility. One is the Beacons technology. It’s small Bluetooth devices that we set in strategic location in the building. And the other one is a proprietary technology we developed. You can think of it as a QR code on steroids, if you will. It’s a visual graphic that can be identified by the camera, detect by the camera from a very far distance in hard angles, in hard light conditions, and very quickly. And when that’s detected, it gives the user, again, the description of what is there and how far is that from me.

Again, in their own language, in their own pace as well, by the way, it could be faster or slower. Yeah, and the last component of the system is a cloud dashboard that help us manage it all from the audio description standpoint. I would mention that from the user perspective at least, you don’t need to be connected to the internet in order to enjoy the app. So you can go to facilities and get those descriptions. Again, also under emergency situations where you don’t want to rely on data, on cellular or on Wi-Fi. Yeah.

Nice, nice. And I love that you brought up, because I was going to actually ask about the internet just because I know some places, especially if you have to go to the VA or some places like that, you get in the basement or something, maybe the internet or the data connectivity isn’t very good, but yet that’s a place that a lot of folks who may have a visual impairment might need to go for services and things.

Exactly.

And as somebody that works in a nonprofit, sometimes our buildings are a little older and may not kind of have everything. So I love that it’s going to work in that kind of situation. You brought up something amazing that I want to explore. So I can kind of plan out my trip a little bit before I even go?

Yes. So think of it as a little bit of a kind of a mental map, if you will. And we built that feature because we understand that there is a confidence level for users to actually go there by themselves, maybe for the first time. So in order to help with that decision even, giving them as much information as possible beforehand so they can learn the facility a little bit before they actually go, we found that to be very worthwhile and very helpful to a lot of folks.

Oh, definitely. Yeah. I just think of, because you kind of said earlier, and I love that you said it, that if you make something that’s going to be able to help folks that are blind or visually impaired, it’ll help everybody. And so I think of folks that, yeah, there is a lot of anxiety for some disabilities or really, I guess sometimes for a lot of us, just being in a new place, am I going to go the wrong way? Or I’ve only got so much time to get there and there are all these hallways. How do I get to the place I need to be? So I love that I can plan it out and really kind of have that little bit of confidence walking in and then get all the extra information once I really get there.

Yeah, yeah. It’s like a directory that comes with you wherever you go. And Josh, RightHear is more of an orientation solution rather than a navigation type of solution. So if navigation is about taking you from point A to point B, like take me to Josh office and then turn right, turn left and right, turn left. You’ve arrived. So this is not what we’re doing at RightHear. What we’re doing is kind of imitating what’s the signage at the facility we do. So if it’s a directory, and this is not better or worse than navigation, it’s just different, I would say. It’s a different aspect of wayfinding and it’s a crucial aspect. Without signage, even if you, I always give the example, even if you navigate a specific gate in an airport, but if that gate won’t have the sign that says this is gate B5, you won’t know you’re at B5. So you have to have something there indicating that you’re there and that’s our focus.

Oh yeah, [inaudible 00:13:51]. And I think of even like in our building, because yeah, you do have the directory on each floor and it tells you which way to turn, which floor to go to and all those things, which gets you in the right direction and you really going there. So I know you said pretty much anything that can kind of be on signage, which is a whole lot of stuff, but I guess what all kinds of information can be relayed through RightHear?

Yeah, that’s a great question. In essence, what the app does is taking any text that the facility said, program there at the backend and speak it out loud again to the user in his own language and pace, as I said before. So we’ve seen projects where it can be more elaborative for exhibits, whether it’s a museum or exhibit show or things of that sort so you can be more elaborative of what exactly is going on there. But the basic of it is really the wayfinding side of things. So just allowing the person just to orientate again or freely or independently at that specific space. One interesting aspect of it is when you think about audio descriptions, I think many of us came across audio descriptions in movies. You can turn that on Netflix and other. So there’s a whole profession of describing movies to the blind community, how you write those audio descriptions for movies.

What’s excites me with what we’re doing it RightHear is that there’s not enough, I would say, know how on how to describe a facility for a blind person, a built environment, because we never had the medium for that. So there’s a lot of know how that we’ve been able to develop over the years, but there’s still, I think, a whole profession that I think that is kind of built on top of this new category of describing the environment for the blind and visually impaired, which excites me very much.

Oh, most definitely. And you brought up a great point. We’ve talked a lot about it from the user perspective, but yeah, if I’m a business and I want to install this and put the Beacons and have RightHear kind of in my place, do you offer that guidance on what to include and how to include it?

Yes. So I love that question. We’re actually now developing together with one of our partners. We haven’t announced it yet, so-

I won’t tell anybody. I mean, I’m just kidding. Everybody will hear. I’m sorry.

Soon to be announced, but we’re basically racing, I would say, we’re working on a certification program, I guess I can call it a course of how to set up the system because yes, it is required some know how. Where do you place those Beacons? Where do you place those markers? How do you set up the information there? How do you test it’s actually helpful for a blind person? So we do that with a strategic partner who’s helping us developing this with the hope that many could do that. But the good news is that the system has been designed to be very simple to set up. Again, as I said, if you will, our main reference point is the braille signs. We believe that if there is a braille sign there, the sign should also speak. So in order to make that on scale in a high volume, it has to be simple. It has to be super simple, like sticking a sticker on the wall, not more than that. And that’s part of how we design it from the back end.

No, and that’s great because I feel like just sometimes it’s like businesses may want to make their place more accessible, but it’s so hard. It takes maintenance. I’ve got to have a professional that I hire just to do this part. So being able to make it easier, well, it makes it easier on the business to make it more accessible. So I guess you’re making it accessible on both ends.

Yes, absolutely. Exactly that. Exactly. And as I tell the team the whole time, it has to be a no-brainer decision, first of all. So again, as I said before, the system is completely standalone. There’s no internet required, there’s no electricity required, there’s nothing. It’s a standalone. From an IT perspective, it’s an easy decision for facilities to adopt. From a cost perspective, it’s a very affordable solution. It depends, if it’s a small restaurant or if it’s a big university campus, yes, it’s ranged between that, but it’s usually a very affordable, cost-effective solution to adopt. And from an operational standpoint, you stick a sticker and that’s it.

Nothing more to do than that. So yeah, we want to make it accessible and easy and simple. And we’ve seen for restaurants, we’ve seen that happen within 10 minutes. You can have the restaurants accessible and we’ve seen parks that within a couple of hours, and we’ve seen projects that were bigger for maybe two days or three days, but usually not more than that. I can hardly think of a project that took us more than two or three days. We’re in 2,500 locations, so we’ve been around.

Nice, nice. Well, yeah. And I mean, anything building accessibility into a building that you can do in two or three days, that’s almost unheard of. Well, I know you’ve probably got plenty of these, but can you tell me a story about someone’s experience using the RightHear app from a user’s perspective that was maybe able to access someplace that they had a challenge with before?

Yeah. Well, I can give you a fun experience from a few years ago. Obviously, I won’t share the names, et cetera, but one of our users, and that was a surprising use case, if you will, to what we were doing, because we didn’t design it for this, but that’s how she used it. She was taking a bus to a new destination, and she wasn’t sure where to take off the bus, when to take off the bus, where exactly is her station. She was trying to count the number of stations, like 10 stations, whatever, to get off the bus. And then because she wasn’t so sure, she asked the driver if he can tell her where to stop. And it wasn’t the nicest driver, so he wasn’t necessarily cooperating with her, unfortunately. And instead of her getting upset with him, she said, “Hey, actually, I can just open up the app and it tells me every few meters or feet or time, and it’s up to the user to define where I am. So I actually know where I am through that, so I won’t need to even ask him.”

And to me, that was a creative way of using the app. We didn’t develop for this, but just one story that came to mind. Josh, we have a growing and big community already. We’re meeting every week on Friday, and it’s always a pleasure to see people from all sides of the country and beyond. We have people coming from Africa, from the Middle East, from Europe on those Friday meetups and hearing how they use the app, how they find it helpful, and also what need to be improved. There’s a lot of room to improve as well.

Oh, definitely. And I mean, that’s where you’re going to learn is in those use cases of folks of just where they have challenges. And yeah, I always love just hearing how folks take the tool and run with it and use it in different ways. Well, I guess the same kind of question, but can you maybe tell me a story about someone’s experience using RightHear from a business perspective as far as installing it and putting it in their place?

Sure. From a business perspective, an interesting story is actually from last year, it’s the Children’s National Hospital. Children’s National Hospital in Washington, DC, they were actually looking for a way to provide a signage at the hospital in multiple languages. There are people coming from actually all around the world to that hospital, but there are foreign different languages, many different languages coming to that specific hospital. Obviously, you cannot put so much in a sign.

No.

I mean, most people-

One very big sign with very small print.

Exactly. And we’ve heard that by the way also from airports as well, but from them, that was their need. And that was main driver of why adopting it, because again, while the visual signs are currently still in English and maybe Spanish, I’m not sure, yes, everyone at the facility can still find their way around independently by hearing that through the app. It’s a free app, again, that they invite you to download. So to me, again, from a business story, if you will, that was the pain they were looking to solve, which is, I would call it an accessibility pain, but it’s not the regular accessibility pain, not from people with disabilities per se, and they find us. It took us about two days, I think, to set it up there, that hospital, and the feedback is great.

Awesome. And yeah, I can see, because like you said, trying to get all the languages and everything on there would be, well, impossible, because you’re still going to miss a few. My goodness, just in the time it would take a person to look through the whole entire sign to find the one that actually comes to. It might be, and especially in a hospital setting, a little bit too late to find you’re at the wrong place.

And I’m coming from Israel, obviously, unless you speak Hebrew, there’s a lot of facilities where you won’t be able to understand what’s going on from the signage there because you won’t even… It reminds me one time in China, it was about 10 years ago in an airport in China when I got lost and I really felt lost because I had no idea where to even start understanding where I am.

Sure, sure. Yeah, because the letters are completely different. Everything’s just completely different. So those little cues you might kind of look for be able to-

Exactly.

To decipher are just gone. Just absolutely gone.

Exactly.

Yep.

Exactly.

Most definitely. Well, if our listeners want to find out more, what’s a good way for them to learn more about RightHear?

Yeah. So first of all, online, we have plenty of places. Our website is right-hear.com. It’s R-I-G-H-T dash H-E-A-R.com. So RightHear is you hear where you are .coom. I’m always available. I’m trying to be as accessible as I can. So my email is Idan, I D-A-N @right-hear.com. We have a wonderful community manager, Chanel. She’s in New York. She’s blind herself and she’s doing incredible work with our community. Every week, again, Friday, 1:00 P.M., we’re meeting online at 30 minutes talking about what’s really important for the community. Not always accessibility, not always our app, not always assistive technology, but always what really matters to the community right now. So that’s another way. We’re on LinkedIn, we’re on Facebook, and we’re trying to be in all the others as well, but that’s the two main social media ones. And I want to encourage, Josh, if I may add here something actually, one of our biggest insight over the past two, three years is that in order for our vision of having these talking signs out there as much as possible to flourish and to succeed, we very much need the community advocating for this.

At the end of the day, when we reach out to, whether if it’s a stadium or a hospital or a shopping mall or airport, whatever that is, they perceived us, for good reason, as a company is trying to sell them something. Yes, we are charging those facilities for this service. I said that the app is free, but we are a for-profit company and that’s our business model. So this is how they perceive us. But when they hear about this need from a client, a guest, a visitor to their facility, that’s changed the dynamic completely, completely. Like, “Oh yeah, sure. We want to give you a better experience in our hotel or whatever that is. How can we do that?” And then they look online and maybe find us or one of the other great other options out there, but that’s helped us build a category of this. And I’m sharing this with you, Josh, and with the listeners because we highly encourage the community. If you believe that signs need to speak up, then speak up yourself and join our movement with this.

Most definitely. Well, we will put all the contact information and everything down in the show notes so that folks can check it out. Thank you so much for coming on for telling us all about RightHear, the amazing things it can do to help with orientation and just so much more, just making information accessible at all different kinds of places. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much, Josh, and to all of you who are listening to us today.

Do you have a question about assistive technology? Do you have a suggestion for someone we should interview on an Assistive Technology Update? If so, call our listener line at (317) 721-7124. Send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org or shoot us a note on Twitter @INDATAproject. Our captions and transcripts for the show are sponsored by the Indiana Telephone Relay Access Corporation or INTRAC. You can find out more about INTRAC at relayindiana.com. A special thanks to Nikol Prieto for scheduling our amazing guests and making a mess of my schedule. Today’s show was produced, edited, hosted, and fraught over by yours truly. The opinions expressed by our guests are their own and may or may not reflect those of the INDATA Project, Easterseals Crossroads, our supporting partners, or this host. This was your Assistive Technology Update. I’m Josh Anderson with the INDATA Project at Easterseals Crossroads in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana. We look forward to seeing you next time. Bye-bye.