When David Rabie started developing the idea for the Tovala Smart Oven, he didn’t expect it to make such an impact on people with disabilities. He was just a busy grad student trying to cook a quick dinner without depending on fast food.
“I thought, ‘There’s got to be a way to get a home-cooked meal — a meal that’s cooked from scratch, from raw ingredients — but not actually spend all the time cooking,’” Rabie said on Assistive Technology Update. “I tried the convenient solutions that were out there, whether that was meal kits where they sent you ingredients and you did the work yourself or pre-cooked meals that you reheated in the microwave. And I just felt like everything fell short somewhere, whether it was the freshness and taste of the food or the amount of time that was required to make it happen. That’s when I started thinking, ‘Well, what if we built a system kind of like a Nespresso machine, but instead of coffee, we replaced it with fresh ingredients and had a magical device that would cook them for you automatically?’”
Rather than simply reheating frozen meals, the Tovala rotates between steaming, baking, broiling, air frying and toasting to cook different items appropriately. If you sign up for the weekly meal plan, the food is packaged neatly, and little prep is needed beyond sprinkling some spice or topping with sauce — no chopping, dicing, etc.
Each meal description card comes with a QR code that you scan to prepare the meal in just 20 minutes or less. You can also scan the barcodes on grocery items to set cooking settings. The oven plays a jingle once a meal is ready. These features can be particularly beneficial for people with low vision.
The Tovala app makes cooking even more accessible with guided recipes, screen reader integrations, item-specific buttons, etc. (There’s a button just for salmon!)
For more information, visit tovala.com/accessibility.
Image courtesy of tovala.com.
Please visit tovala.com/accessibility to learn more about Tovala’s accessibility features!
A good reminder that thoughtful design often helps more people than the original target audience.
It’s incredible to see how a device made for busy schedules can end up being such a game-changer for independent living. The barcode scanning and screen reader support must be a huge help for people with low vision.