Inspiration
Back in 2012, Marty taught an after school club for creating iPhone apps. They built "WishToList" - an app for kids to select items they want for their birthday. The kids came up with the ideas, and Marty programmed their suggestions.
Driving Game for Blind Teens
In the following semester, the kids wanted to build a fun game. We created an game that didn't use the screen - Blindfold Racer - a multilevel racing game for blind people, where you drive with your ears instead of your eyes.
Best Accessible Game
In 2013, we submitted Blindfold Racer to the App Store, and it was so popular that it jumped to the top of the accessible games list.
Key People
Word about Blindfold Racer spread quickly through the visually impaired community. In 2014, Marty met with amazing people including the Executive Director of the American Council for the Blind. They asked for more games: an audio Sudoku game, audio Solitaire, and audio Cryptogram.
Word Spreads in the Community
After creating those 3 games, hundreds of blind people emailed Marty, requesting more games. As a result, over 80 games were created between 2012 and 2017. In total, the games have been downloaded more than 500,000 times.
Teachers use the Blindfold Game
Blind students told their teachers about the games, and teachers requested games to teach assistive technology skills . For example, our Blindfold Battleship game ("Is your ship at B-4?") teaches grid concepts
ObjectiveEd founded in 2018
We realized we could help thousands of blind and low-vision students by using gamification to teach Orientation & Mobility, Assistive Technology and Braille Literacy. Combining decades of experience from our prior company, eSped, Marty, Bob and Luke launched a new company - ObjectiveEd - to help students with a disability improve their educational outcomes through cutting-edge technology.
Braille + iPad = Early Braille Literacy
We designed many skill-building games for visually impaired students, then in 2019, we developed Braille Sheets for early braille literacy. Place a sheet of braille on an iPad, and the student plays a variety braille games.
Innovation Award
In 2020, Braille Sheets was selected for the Touch of Genius Award and the award was presented at the CSUN assistive technology conference.
Chance Meeting Leads to Award
At CSUN, we met with Kirk Adams, Executive Director of the American Foundation for the Blind and Jessica Rafuse (Microsoft's AI for Accessibility team). When Kirk was young, he orally read braille as his teacher corrected his mistakes - we could provide similar feedback via speech recognition. Jessica suggested we apply for the Microsoft grant.
Braille AI Tutor
In 2020, Microsoftt awarded us a grant to create Braille AI Tutor. Blind students practice reading braille as the AI checks their oral reading. For each sentence read correctly, the student moves ahead in a treasure hunting game.
National Science Foundation Funding
Braille AI Tutor was so effective that teachers suggested we apply our innovation to help students with dyslexia. In 2022, we won an NSF Phase I grant to create BuddyBooks.
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BuddyBooks
Efficacy testing showed that BuddyBooks significantly improved fluency and accuracy for students with dyslexia. In 2024, NSF awarded a Phase 2 grant to expand features to help all struggling readers.