The New PENfriend Is Here!
The PENfriend, developed in conjunction with the Royal National Institute of Blind People in England, is a great device developed to assist with identifying things around the house. People with vision loss often face a challenge when trying to identify common items such as cans, as there is no tactile indication as to what they might be. As such, anything that can help with identifying products is a good thing!
The PENfriend is a great tool for this as it offers a simple to use solution which can help you label most things. This is done via a pen shaped device, with three prominent and tactile buttons which are used to control it. The pen is able to identify labels (some are included and you can purchase more separately) whenever you bring it close to them. The process is simple: take a label and stick it on the thing you want to be identified; Put the pen near the label and record a voice label for the item; now whenever you bring the pen near that label, the voice recording will be played back!
This system does require some setup to record the voice labels, and this may need to be done by a sighted friend or relative. Once setup however, you can easily identify items that otherwise would be unrecognizable. Labels are also reusable, allowing you to record new voice labels on them if you want to. The PENfriend 3 also has some cool features such as the ability to play MP3s and audio books, making it a multi-functional tool!
If the PEN friend sounds like something that would be beneficial for you, then check out the video below to find out more about it, and see it on our store at https://vision-forward.org/product/penfriend/