What happens if you have a visual impairment and you arrive at a hotel you’re unfamiliar with? Where are the switches, the air con controls? How to make a coffee, or tell the shampoo from the
shower gel? It’s the same at a restaurant. Without a helping pair of eyes, it’s difficult to choose from the menu.
It’s obvious when you think about it, but Stéphanie has made it her mission. A mission for independence. Freshly graduated from Centrale Lyon, she launched the project OOrion, an adventure that puts technology to work for participants. It started as an app designed to make it easier to identify urban facilities and shop fronts, to remove obstacles that can make the “last metre” so difficult.
Little by little, she developed her tech and trained her AI to make it an effective, increasingly diverse life assistant. Hotels are asking to have their rooms and communal areas “scanned”, while restaurants like Brasserie Georges or the one run by the chocolatier Bernachon are making their
menus accessible, so that everyone can enjoy the “right to tourism”.
ONLYLYON Tourism & Conventions is also using the app. As a gateway to the city, the Tourist Office has made its tourist pamphlets and information accessible via the app, to allow the pleasure of exploring the local area to be fully shared by all, using just a smartphone or now with Meta’s AI glasses.