By leveraging and integrating cutting-edge technology with relatively simple graphics, companies in a variety of sectors are making it easier for consumers with visual impairments to go about their daily lives. Enabled by a sophisticated app, users of NaviLens’s service can readily scan dedicated codes on product packaging and public signs to gain detailed information that facilitates their independence, need satisfaction, and capabilities.

In more detail, NaviLens has developed a square code that is, in some ways, similar to the QR codes that consumers find nearly everywhere these days. But the NaviLens code uses bright, distinctive colors, which makes it easier for people with limited vision to find those squares on packages or signs. The squares feature a dark black frame, such that they are clearly differentiated from any other colorful packaging designs. Then bright pink, blue, yellow, and black squares within the frame establish a particular code for the specific product or directional sign.

Users who have downloaded the NaviLens app can scan these codes. In grocery stores, the app provides them with nutritional and price information for products. Kellogg was the first company to adopt and apply the labels to all its products. Coca-Cola is another recent adopter, and the developer hopes that most consumer packaged goods companies will follow suit.

But the tool is not limited to products; NaviLens codes also appear throughout the New York Metro system, guiding riders with visual impairments to find the trains they want and offering detailed train arrival information. In Barcelona, where the company was founded and maintains its headquarters, the codes guide riders of both trams and busses, facilitating navigation, ticket purchases, and access to the vehicles.

For consumers whose visual impairments are severe enough that they cannot physically discern the codes, the app provides further assistance. Unlike QR codes that require precise camera placement, NaviLens can detect its codes from about 12 meters away and from a variety of angles. Verbal instructions then guide users to move their camera to capture the code accurately, together with large arrows on their mobile devices that guide them toward the required angle and distance. Users also can program the app to read the relevant information aloud.

The app currently is free to download and available in 35 different languages, in line with the company’s determination to meet the needs of and provide value to the 39 million blind and 246 million visually impaired people throughout the world.

Discussion Questions

1. How might retailers make use of this technology in stores and/or on other product offerings?

Sources: Ebony JJ Curry, “New App Helps Visually Impaired with Grocery Shopping,” ABC 12 News (Michigan), March 13, 2023; Kellogg, “Kellogg and NaviLens: Everybody Deserves a Place at the Table,” https://www.kelloggs.com/en_US/NaviLens.html; NaviLens, “Discover NaviLens,” https://www.navilens.com/en/; Chris Welsch, “A Digital Map for the Blind,” European Investment Bank, December 9, 2020, https://www.eib.org/en/stories/blind-digital-sign-language