APP STORE AWARDS

Cultural Impact winner: Oko

Oko - Cross streets and Maps

Recognize signals and navigate

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With the power of AI and hours of field-testing behind it, this app helps those who are blind or have low vision safely find their own way.

– App Store Editors

Brothers Michiel and Vincent Janssen started building Oko as a favour for a friend.

“I remember Michiel saying, ‘If cars can drive autonomously at 60 mph, we should be able to help our visually impaired friend walk around his neighbourhood,’” Vincent says.

Their AI-powered tool helps those who are blind or have low vision safely cross busy intersections. Just point your iPhone camera at a pedestrian crossing and the app will let you know – through haptics, audio cues and colour – when it’s safe to cross. Its AI models run locally on your iPhone, so there’s no need for a steady internet connection.

Oko’s object recognition was trained on millions of images to let you know when it’s safe to proceed – and when the countdown signal has started.

The team spent three months testing the app with a focus group of 100 people who are blind or have low vision.

“One design flaw immediately got noticed: landscape versus portrait,” Vincent says. “The app was initially designed to be used in landscape view, but testing revealed people found it challenging to hold their iPhone that way. We revamped the interface to also work in portrait orientation.”

As for their friend who inspired the app? He uses Oko daily and says inadvertent jaywalking is a thing of the past.

“These kinds of responses really touch us and give us energy to continue improving the app,” Vincent says.

Quick tip

With its new Apple Maps integration, Oko can now display how many steps it will take you to get to your destination, provide turn-by-turn directions and announce when you’re approaching a street crossing. Users can also save favourite spots, such as nearby cafes and food shops, and quickly see recent destinations.

Fun fact

Oko founders Michiel Janssen, Vincent Janssen and Willem Van de Mierop had never created an app before. “I got as far as opening Xcode and seeing ‘Hello World’ on my iPhone,” Vincent says. They built the first version of Oko in eight weeks.

Meet the creator

The Janssen brothers and Van de Mierop handled every aspect of the app’s creation, including gathering early training data. “Day and night, and while sunny, raining or snowing, Willem would go out and capture images and videos until his hands would freeze off,” Vincent says. “We had to make sure the experience for our users would be perfect.”