Meta’s Ray-Ban stories are pretty nice.
Amazon’s Alexa may be the oldest digital assistant, but it’s not the queen.
Alexa’s vast talents, highlighted by the myriad of integrations she has with everything from TVs to thermostats to microwaves and more, are a big reason for her anointing by media and social media. consumers as the best digital assistant. In this writer’s tech life, however, Alexa plays only a small role. I use Alexa exclusively in the kitchen, where the aforementioned Amazon Basics microwave and Echo wall clock are both paired with an older Echo Dot that was previously gathering dust in my office. The ability to ask Alexa to start the microwave and set timers on the clock with the large LED indicators are huge accessibility benefits for me when cooking. Alexa to make literally cheap and supposedly “gimmicky” home products. After all, you better not make fun of the fact that not everyone can easily use the keyboard of a microwave.
One such gadget has found its way into Amazon’s wearables, including its $270 Echo Frames glasses. Amazon bills the glasses as helping you “save time so you can focus on what matters most” by leveraging Alexa to control phone and music, smart home devices, and more. The premise here is that Amazon is obviously and rightly pushing people to allow Alexa to be the center of their digital universe.
And therein lies the problem: Alexa has no sovereignty over my life.
Amazon sent me a pair of Echo Frames (the sunglasses version) earlier this year, and I’ve spent the last few months using them. In terms of cuteness and build quality, they are on par with the microwave and the wall clock. Unassuming and, in all fairness, uninspiring, but quite usable for its intended functionality. In other words, Chanel or Gucci aren’t, but they get the job done nonetheless.
On a practical level, the Echo Frames are much more interesting from an accessibility point of view than what they can actually do. Conceptually speaking, the hands-free nature is apparently a boon for people with disabilities, especially those for whom interacting with traditional screens is difficult or downright impossible. The ability to discreetly ask Alexa to play music or put a pound of butter on your grocery list goes beyond mere convenience; Using your voice to manage these tasks can be – for people with certain needs and tolerances – significantly more accessible than even using conventional powered accessibility software.
The same can be said for Meta’s Ray-Ban Stories, which essentially do the same things as the Echo Frames but with the obvious focus on Meta’s family of services. Meta sent me a pair of Stories to test more recently, a few months ago, and I found them virtually identical to the Echo Frames in almost every way imaginable. Both look pretty much the same, they do more or less the same job and charge the same. They’re so similar, in fact, that it’s sometimes been hard to tell which glasses I picked up on the way out of the house. In the case of Meta, the big signifier is the Ray-Ban logo on the side of the temple.
Stories has a camera you can take pictures with, but I haven’t tested the feature yet. Like Amazon, Meta is positioning the glasses as a hands-free way to interact with technology that helps you stay in the moment with other humans. Again, it is fascinating to examine the accessibility implications of these products: convenience and fashion factors take a back seat to questions of How? ‘Or’ What people use technology. The hands-free nature of both devices, and in particular the fact that they are face-worn, opens up a world of discussion about how the next frontier of wearable technologies will enable access for people with disabilities over the next decade. . The possibilities in this space are tantalizing.
The biggest question is whether the Echo Frames and Ray-Ban Stories are accessible. As always with accessibility, the answer lies in its needs and tolerances, and where your allegiances land. If you’re blind or visually impaired, for example, it’s fair to wonder if either will really work without a sturdy screen reader-like stand. Being so voice-first interaction-centric is inclusive in many ways, but can be exclusive if your speech patterns stray from typicality. Likewise, neither is particularly pragmatic if you’re not married to an ecosystem. The value proposition of Echo Frames increases exponentially if you’re all-in on Alexa; as someone who’s all-in on Apple products, particularly HomeKit, that Alexa only serves an esoteric function for me limits the appeal of the Echo Frames.
As a strong proponent of wearable technology via Apple Watch and AirPods, the interchangeability of Echo Frames and Stories has led to an interesting realization. Perhaps one of the reasons both devices lack real functional appeal in terms of capacity is that I keep forgetting to charge things. To me, these are much fancier versions of the cheap sunglasses I’ve been using for years. I don’t think of Echo Frames the way I think of my Apple Watch: a computer that needs to be powered to be useful. Echo frames (and stories) are just dumb Sun glasses-something to keep the sun out of my eyes when I’m outside. I clearly haven’t internalized wearing a computer on my face, which these devices indeed are. Before Apple Watch, I never wore a watch either.
All that to say that while Echo Frames and Stories have limited appeal for me (and surely dozens of others) today, both feel like huge precursors to tomorrow. It’s still very early days for face-worn tech, so it’s hard to blame Amazon and Meta for dipping their toes in water. Products like Echo Frames and Stories do a good job of keeping the sun out now, but it’s not hard to imagine the day will soon come when they do so much more, and in an accessible way.
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