Latest / The Eko Lens Podcast / Celebrating One Year of The EKO Lens and EKO Vision Foundation
Transcript
- speaker-0: Welcome to the Eko Lens, the podcast where we view assistive technology through the eyes of lived experience. I'm your host, Kenisha, and each episode we explore how dignity, design, and innovation intersect to empower blind and low-vision communities. We're not just reviewing tech, we're reframing it. So this is a space for truth telling, for honoring the voices that often go unheard, and for challenging the industry to do better. Whether you're a developer, a user, or someone who simply believes in equity, you're in the right place. This is the Eko Lens. Let's take a closer look. Welcome back, everyone. So excited that this is such a special episode. It's our one-year anniversary episode of the Eko Lens and Eko Vision Foundation. And it's also Blindness Awareness Month, which is super, super special. So it feels fitting that we're celebrating our one year anniversary during blindness awareness month. And today we have our fellow founders, Christine and Yorgos, which I'm super excited to have them both today. So we can talk about, what has changed over this year? What have we done? when we when we started a year ago, we didn't know what it was gonna look like today, right? We had all these ideas and Conversations that we wanted to have. And this is only the beginning, right? I'm I'm so excited. It's only the beginning, but you know, it's it's that one year celebration that we're gonna be talking about today. So Christine Yorgos, welcome. So excited to have you here. And you know, when we started one year ago, Christine and Yorgos, what did you hope that the Eko Lens would bring? To the blind and low vision community. speaker-1: First. Yeah. So I remember last year when we first started, the idea was a lot smaller, both in scale and in impact that we had. We're being humble and just really trying to just understand what's out there, trying to do a bit of a, you know, figure out the landscape of how technology looks like for the blind, what kind of access is out there, what kind of existing. resources are out there. And I I remember it like yesterday, we reached out to a professor from a university that is leading a wonderful program and I completely forgot both the name and the university, but maybe Christine can fill in the blanks here later. But I remember our discussion with her and we're coming into it very completely, without any background, just learning this eager to learn, eager to listen. And we had an initial discussion. And of course, right after the discussion we're completely Overwhelmed and at least I was overwhelmed and kind of shocked like, boy, like this is so much bigger than we thought. This is so much more impactful than I well. There's so much more that needs to be done. So that c that's kind of like our first day, our first try, our first ever dis discussion with anyone as Eko Vision, as Eko Lands. And from there we the big thing that we realized from that conversation is okay, we need to have we need to invite people from the community to come and talk to us, come be part of us and assist us and help us into expanding this and making this really more wholesome, more holistic and more inclusive as much as possible. And the community just I don't know if it's karma. I don't know if it's just the result of our good work, but the community just embraced that, work with us and We got to work with so many incredible people. Kenisa, you joined. you were, I feel like one of the foundational keystones to this entire effort. And then through you and through your work, we met so many different people, heard so many incredible stories. And this has been like a self-sustaining engine that has really kept us moving forward. at the end of the day, this nonprofit, it's it's bones and its structure, it's all the financing that goes behind that, it's all the reporting, it's all that paperwork and stuff. And that's the stuff I've mostly been engaged with. But on the other side, that the real soul, the meat, the heart of this whole thing has been the podcast, the community and the people through that. So I I guess I didn't answer your question directly on what we were expecting. speaker-0: Did though, you did because you know, you you didn't really know what it might entail or hope to bring to the blind and low vision community. And what we've created is like I think Christine we were talking a little bit about this last week too. We've created like a support group in a sense, right? And a speaker-2: We have a community. speaker-0: A whole community that people are able to share their story and come and feel like they have a place that they are heard, right? What do you think, Christine? speaker-2: I love that Yorgo said that the Echolens podcast is the heart of the Eko Vision Foundation. I love that so much because in the beginning we're trying to do a lot of research, a lot of medical research, a lot of technology research about what we as Eko Vision Foundation supporting technology for the blind what we can do. And then you came along and then we have this Echolens podcast and then we didn't have a lot of like big, you know about this podcast or anything, we just do it. And then we started to engage with a lot we start to talk to a lot of blind and low vision audience, talk about their experiences and we gain so much more from that. You know, people not only talk about technology usage for the blind and low vision, they also talk about how they embrace their vision impairment. They also talk about how technology is helping them to regain their confidence, regain how they can do better every day, they can be independent and stuff. So yeah, this is what I didn't think when we first started as Ecolens and then now it's the heart of Eko Vision Foundation for sure. speaker-0: No, I love that. And it's been so much fun to like like you said, getting to connect with people and talk to people and hear their stories and and know that blindness is the spectrum. So there's so many different types of blind and low vision and how folks are experiencing life on a daily basis. So we've had conversations about vision loss and assistive technology, accessibility, advocacy, AI, lived experience. Do you have any conversations that really stuck out stuck out to you all? I think speaker-2: it was from also from you. from your conversation with our guests, I learned that no matter how much you talk about technology, no matter how much you talk about, physical assistance and stuff, it's about the embracement of your blindness. How to mentally realize and how to mentally accept that this is what can help you and this is what you have right now. And how to deal with that change it speaker-1: I would say that for me it's been how many more people than you would expect are either directly impacted or have indirectly impacted by disability. Almost everyone that I've talked to, and now that I'm a lot more engaged and a lot more active and I'm a lot more open about talking to people and inviting them to share their stories on disability, the more I discover that so many more people than you think are quietly living either directly or indirectly impacted. By disability. And it is the work both of this foundation, but also of many other groups that just normalize it, allow people to feel safe and come out and talk about it. It you realize that there's so many more people out there and you're not alone. And that's something that it was a surprise to me, but it pleasant surprise. It was definitely a surprise to me, but also it was pleasant to see how many people just came out there, shared their story, and finally got embraced by such a community. So I think this is one of the big impacts for me that are more that are just beyond the fact of just, pure numbers of how many people we helped or, how many devices we put out, but instead just being like, Hey, all these people out there, almost everyone out there has a story. speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. The lived experience aspect has been huge. Like we've had folks from, you know, local small town people to our big YouTubers, right? Like how cool is that that we have gotten to speak to such a large different demographic of folks. and I think that's really important when we're doing accessibility and disability work anyways, right? That The folks that we're bringing into the room and hearing their stories are around wide range of people. And so so everyone can have that sense of, you know, I really relate with Corey's story or I really relate with Zoe's story that we recently heard. And, you know, Jesse and Ben, like literally everyone that we've talked to has had such a powerful background and, you know, how they're putting their their message out into the world, right? But we're not only doing Eko Lens, right? I want to hear about some of the other stuff that we've been doing that folks might not necessarily know on the back end because we not we don't talk about it much on the podcast platform rather than like the Beautiful Project and a little bit of the Eko review. But I want to hear a little bit more about the other projects that that we have going on and Then we'll talk about, what we hope to move forward. speaker-2: after this whole year and I started talk to more and more people and I start to tell them who we are and what we've done. And then I started to realize we have done so much. although we have the personalities that we always think this is not enough. But we we already speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-2: I also I'm eager to, do more. But but we really did a lot. We make a lot of friends. We put ourselves, people know about us right now, know about we are the nonprofit, bridging the gap between technology and the blind and low vision. And then we started to talk in the conferences, talk in different companies, doing trainings. We have cited audience talking about blindness awareness. We also have blind and low vision audience talking about how is the first step of just, using your phone. How do you move around safely? How do you use your computer? And then the more events, how to use AI to help with your vision and then how to work with technology. So so we have done so much. And then this year we already, talked to some conferences, international conferences. But the most heartwarming thing is the feedback from the audience. Mm-hmm. every time we go on and share our story, share what we're doing. And the audience is just like, thank you for saying this. Thank you for talking about this story or talk about the disability text behind it because this really happened to them. Mm-hmm. So We have done so much but the most, achievement I would say is not something that's measurable. It's the is the feedback from people. And speaker-1: I will say another part that I really enjoyed that really kinda came out of nowhere and we weren't expecting it to be such a big deal was the work we've done with the some of the student community through our internship program. So yeah. That came out speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: Yeah. And that came out initially more as a as a at like maybe a self helping or just basically we needed help and we're like, Okay, well, you know, when we were university we really appreciate the opportunity to help. to help and get experience by volunteering. So let's offer that up. But instead of just, giving a bunch of kids or a bunch of students a task and be like, hey, figure this out, we work closely and we actually were very grateful and very honored to have received help and, to to award internships and to receive award and work together with people who are directly also impacted by some things. And we were able to both offer them, of course, the internship and the experience, but also work with them. to develop ideas for them to provide a lot of teaching to towards us specifically, and then even for their own education to be able to present the work they've done, to present the f findings they've done and directly impact and directly work towards helping them getting that degree, getting that master's degree, getting that PhD degree. So I think that came out of an award and it was one of my favorite things that we've done this year. And I'm really looking forward on doing it again this coming year as well. speaker-2: And with the first cohort of our interns, we have a medical doctor who is blind working with us. And that whole internship of three months that we shaped the shape of the Eko Review, actually, which is what we've been talking about, the beautiful project, the Eko Review. We always wanted to have a platform for the community to talk about their experiences, to talk about how they use technology. and not just, one star, five stars rating. It's talk about different aspects of their experiences of this technology. So we're able to achieve that and then now the Eko Review is coming alive. speaker-0: Yeah, I'm I'm excited about that. And I wanna go back to the the intern the intern piece, how we built that into the Eko review, right? But I also learned so much from the interns about, how to tailor to different levels of blind and low vision. And, you know, it was really awesome that it w it was really fun to do like those weekly one on ones and be able to have conversations around, you know, social justice and nonprofit work and how to do a podcast, right? Like if that's something that they wanted to do later down the road, now, you know, we were able to give them some of the foundational knowledge to be able to do that, which was really cool. And I learned so much from them in return. So I'm definitely excited for the internships to continue. That's gonna be super awesome. And like you said, they they really give that gave that insight of so many things and help with the research for the Eko Review, which is our hugest next launch, right? That we're excited to talk about today because the Eko Review was one of the main ideas, Christine, that you had coming into Eko Vision Foundation. Tell us about the Eko review. Tell us about what we can expect and how it's going to work. speaker-2: So this was not my first first idea when I started this foundation, but I was doing a lot of research. I was talking to a lot of people, a lot of nonprofits, a lot of different organizations. And then I found out there's a lot of help with employment, a lot of help with local physical stuff, but not a lot about sharing experiences with each other about technology. And there's no one doing this. Although people are talking online. There's this post in this group, that post in that group talking about the same thing, but then when you want to search, when you Google, there's nothing not a unified platform for people to see different experiences on the same product. So that we thought about that and then we decided maybe this is the thing that we can do and maybe this is our purpose. as a foundation. So we started to form, we are doing research about how can we rate, how can we review different products? What are the aspects that people care about when using assistive technology for the blind? Because for people like foresighted people, maybe computer the speed is very important for them, but for blind, we have maintenance. How long is the battery life? How accurate is it? Or how reliable is the result of the AI, you know, how do they recognize staff? And then we also have privacy aspect about it, will they read my credit card information? Everything. So we have so many different angles that we want to view technology. And then so we really did a lot of research on that. And of course, the important affordability. So we have five different angle that we wanna view technology and we build a website, people can add a product they wanna share and then they can give review and then not only single sentence, we are having five different angles to ask people how do you feel this product. Now we'll speaker-1: also to quickly think also again part of part of our superstar team is the fact that part of this the website was developed and designed by one of our board members, Chris, who is who's on serving on the board of directors and he's a programmer. And again, it shows how we've brought in we've very grateful that we managed to bring in all these people with this diverse set of backgrounds, with this incredible set of skills and they're all working and helping towards the same towards a specific goal. And how, you know By his help we managed to get and we got this amazing website up and running. So just very thankful about that. I wanted to give him a shout out. Thank you, Chris. speaker-0: Yes, thanks, Chris. It's awesome. We love it. And we are welcoming you all to go to the Eko review.org and do your reviews for us on what you think is, the best working technology for you and your blind and low vision journey and you're able to rate, you can add things, and you can see what other people are putting too. And our hope is to, you know, take away. some of that stress when it comes to looking for new products. And all of these reviews are by blind and low vision folks, lived experts. This is not, we're not getting paid for ads, we're not getting paid for reviews. That's why I think it's so important that the folks that come to the website and the folks that are, interacting and leaving reviews and and using it, are it's catered to the blind and low vision community. speaker-2: And using this platform is completely, completely free. speaker-0: That's the best part speaker-2: Yeah. speaker-0: Yes, yes, yes, yes. speaker-2: And I also wanna talk about we have the community section on the website. You wanna talk a little bit about your articles, Kinesha? speaker-0: Yeah, so the community section of the Eko Review is super awesome because we have articles on there again by lived experience folks who have been through this. So I have a series that I've recently shared on there that is what to expect when you first experience blind and low vision. You know, there's so many different things that folks might not even think about, right? Like how do I make my phone easy to use right away? You know, how how can I what do I do if I can't drive? How can I how can I talk to my employer and let them know with a conversation that now I need some accessibility help because my vision has changed. And maybe when you were first tired on, that wasn't a conversation that you needed to have because sometimes blind and low vision, like my experience, can come a little bit out of nowhere. So lots of articles on there, how to navigate. We're gonna continue to Post articles on there, post blog posts, and probably even have guests posts too, because we want to hear from other folks that have been in this space. So I'm super excited for the website. It looks amazing and it's growing every day. And it's it's gonna be one of our things that I'm most excited about in this upcoming year. So so thinking about that, we wrapped up year one. Bravo to us. Yay, year one. Okay, we're going into year two. Stronger, right? Better than ever. Like, what can folks expect going into year two? What's new? What's coming? I know I can speak for the Eko lens that in our second year we're gonna have more guests, more stories, more lived experience sharing, and introducing more of our accessibility shorts where we have. mini episodes that talk about specific products. we have an episode we recently just posted about AI glasses, right? So specifically talking about that. What works, what doesn't work. And we hope to continue to do that too. What are y'all looking forward to? speaker-2: So this year I wanna pour, most of our resources from Eko Vision Foundation toward this the Eko review dot org because I believe this is really, really helpful for the blind and low vision and that it's gonna help a lot, a lot for people when they first lost their sight, when they're looking for products, when they are just looking f to share their experiences or looking to find other people's experiences. And not only for the community posts from Kinesia, we will also have technology news every month. We also will have medical advisor, the eye doctor, different experts, talking about their side of story or talking about news or their advice on the website. We look forward to seeing a lot of different reviews from you guys. go on the Eko review.org. You can share about whatever product you're using and how you feel about them. speaker-0: What about you, Yorgos? speaker-1: So I feel that first of all I agree with Christine. I feel that as far as products that this foundation is making, of course, you know, we're working all very hard, doing our research, reaching out, create a community. But as far as like deliverables, like when we can you know, we're out in the world, we're out of a non profit world and we wanna point at, hey, what do we do is two things. It's the Eko Lens and the incredible work that you do, Kenisha, and then it's the website and it's this Eko review because it's like this is the results of our hard work. So these are the two things I definitely want to focus on. Excited to see the new guests, excited to see, you know, the the the different people, especially the more, you know, the more technical people joining the platform and providing information as Christine said. I'm personally excited that as we're maturing, we're not a nascent nonprofit anymore. We're not, you know, we're over one year officially. Hopefully this is going to convene for many more years. But now that we're getting more established, Now that we're getting our feet on the ground, now that we're understanding more and more how the environment, the nonprofit environment and community works, I'm excited to see to see us getting out there more with our identity, on our own-to-feet, with our products in our backs, and just going out there, interacting and engaging with our nonprofits, cooperating with other nonprofits, getting some stuff done, maybe running an event, like going and you know, represent ourselves and gain one exposure as a as a matter of fact. we are we will be going on a fair, I think, later this month. And we're gonna be presenting ourselves at a fair. I'm very excited about that. And we're going to already engage through some different companies. They have these ERGs, these employing resource groups that are inside corporation organizations that share resources and share stories. And we already have been active in some of those and we're gonna continue to do so. So I'm looking forward to that. And then Danny Getting out there, getting that community voice out there and really embracing it and using that as fuel to keep us moving forward. speaker-0: Yeah. And we're expanding too into education more, which is like you said, so the fairs and things like that. We've done a couple of conferences. We got to do some international conferences with Retina International, which were super awesome. And I'm excited about continuing our partnership with them. We also are going to be doing some more educational things out and about coming soon here, you know, and and we're in talks with with folks about continued partnerships. So, if you do wanna partner with us, reach out. We're we're open to partner with for research and education and webinars and, speaking, whatever whatever we wanna partner together to do to be able to continue to get that message out. I'm I'm excited about that part too. It's it's it's gonna be a cool year. It really is. And we've done so much, like you said, Christine, that you don't really even think about it. And then I'm like, wait, Christine, pat yourself on the back because you have done so much this year, and then we'll have so much fun in Europe changes and newness going into next year as well. So, which I'm I'm really excited for. So, thinking about that, thinking about it being blindness awareness month. It's been one year since we've kicked off. We're back and we're gonna be starting season two, year two, blindness awareness month really often focuses on education education around sighted of sighted people around blindness. But if you could change that conversation a little bit, which we really have been over the last year, what would you want? blindness awareness month to actually be about. speaker-2: Something similar to your work and the Eko Lens is doing, it just Blindness Awareness Month is not only for sighted people to be more aware about blindness. It's also we can be more aware about ourselves, our capability to do anything with technology. To be aware of what you can do with help, with resources, with technology, with different people's advice, experiences. So that's the awareness I wanna talk more about, not only to decided people, but also inward to ourselves. speaker-1: And I would say just maybe again, a reminder, like I said in the start of this conversation, a reminder that you're not alone and it's an opportunity to tell your story and there's a lot of power in stories, a lot of power in community. So using this opportunity to just again share your story, go out there, listen to other people's stories and remind yourself you're in love with there's a big supportive structure out there. speaker-0: Yeah, I definitely agree with both of you. I want I want folks to know that, you know, blindness is a spectrum. And we talk about this all the time. I think I say it literally every episode because literally every person we talk to and literally every person that we communicate with, whether it's resources or connection or training, like everyone has a different intersection when it comes to blind and low vision community. And I think it's just really important to remember that. And there's a lot more folks out there dealing with blind and low vision than you would think. Because, you can't you can't assume that someone is not blind and low vision. Most of the time they self-disclosed. But yeah, just learning and growing in that aspect and remembering that you have a space here to be able to do that. So I'm excited about continuing conversations next year. I'm excited to continue to work with you, Christine and Yorgos, and see what your vision brings, as you two continue to lead this amazing platform that we're building and as it continues to grow. Yeah. So thank you for joining us on the Eko Lens, where we review assist of technology through the eyes of lived experience. So if today's conversation sparks something in you, you can share it, rate it. and keep the dialogue going. If you want to learn more about assistive technology and hear from others with lived experience, you can visit theecoreview.org for reviews and personal perspectives. Until next time, stay curious, stay connected, and keep staying with love.