NewTech Friday: OOrion – Locating assistance for visually impaired individuals

Stéphanie Robieux, CEO of OOrion, tells us how the app was born during her engineering studies when she and co-founder Thomas Brisson met a visually impaired woman. OOrion, an AI-driven mobile app, helps users find and reach objects and text in their environment, serving over 4,000 users across 90+ countries. Future plans include expanding globally with translations in 30 languages, launching a paid version in 2024, and introducing a feature for user customization and object addition.


What led to the creation of OOrion?

OOrion was created while Thomas and I were still in our engineering studies. We had the chance to meet Christine, a visually impaired woman, during a HandiTech weekend. She shared a story with us about how, the previous day, she had spent over 10 minutes on the floor in her hallway after dropping her keys. Only to finally have to call her son for assistance to get back inside her home.

We realized that Christine's experience represented a real problem, a problem that 253 million individuals who suffer from visual impairments could have.

Combining our engineering skills with this important need we had identified, we came up with the idea for OOrion. After a significant amount of work, we were able to release the first prototype of the app in January 2022. The app received positive feedback and presented numerous opportunities for further development.

With this in mind, we embarked on the OOrion adventure!