Agiliway Announces Provodyr, an AI Guide for Blind and Low-Vision Users

Agiliway, an AI-augmented software development company, has announced Provodyr, a voice-first mobile app for blind and low-vision users. Provodyr describes surroundings on request, gives walking directions by clock position, and estimates which floor an elevator has reached. The app will be available on both iOS and Android.

Most navigation apps are built around a visual map, with voice directions layered on as a convenience. For blind and low-vision users, that design leaves gaps the moment someone steps outside a familiar route.

A crosswalk might have no audible signal. A store aisle gives no way to tell what is on the shelf. Many elevators still open with no audible or tactile confirmation of the floor. Provodyr was built around these specific situations, combining AI scene description, spoken walking directions, and elevator-floor estimation into a single voice-first tool.

Scene Description and Q&A

At the center of Provodyr is a scene-description and Q&A mode that uses the phone’s camera and microphone together. Users speak rather than type. The app answers situational questions: what is directly ahead, what a sign says, whether a seat is free. It can also recognize people nearby and describe their expressions, giving users social context that sighted people read automatically.

Provodyr runs on a combination of OpenAI and Gemma models for scene understanding and reasoning, Moonshine for on-device speech recognition, and StyleTTS for spoken responses. The stack is built to answer quickly enough to be useful in the moment.

Navigation Built Around the Clock, Not the Map

Provodyr’s second mode frames walking directions by clock position rather than street names or map coordinates, telling a user that a curb cut sits at two o’clock or a doorway at eleven. The mode draws on OpenRouteService for route data, translated into the body-relative cues many blind and low-vision pedestrians already use to orient themselves.

Estimating Which Floor the Elevator Has Reached

The third mode addresses elevators that give no audible or tactile confirmation of the floor. Provodyr uses the phone’s barometric sensor to detect elevation changes and estimate which floor the elevator has reached. Accuracy can vary with building design and atmospheric conditions.

What Works With and Without a Connection

Speech recognition and speech synthesis, the assistant’s local AI model, elevator-floor tracking, and recognition of people and their expressions all run on-device and continue to work without an internet connection. Route data and richer scene understanding draw on cloud models when a connection is available. The design is intended to keep core functions usable in transit, underground, or where coverage is limited.

Provodyr works alongside VoiceOver and TalkBack rather than replacing them, integrating with the screen readers users already know.

Hands-Free Operation with Smart Glasses

While Provodyr runs on a smartphone, its voice-first design extends to smart glasses fitted with a camera and open-ear speakers. Capturing the view from head level and delivering spoken cues allows users to operate the app without holding a phone, leaving hands free for a white cane, a guide dog harness, or daily tasks.

Built With and For the People Who’ll Use It

“We didn’t want to build another app that treats accessibility as a feature request. Every mode in Provodyr started from a specific problem a blind or low-vision user described to us, not from a spec sheet,” says Sergiy Korniyenko, CEO of Agiliway.

Ahead of release, Agiliway has been working with rehabilitation centers and veterans’ programs that support blind and low-vision individuals to gather feedback on how the app performs in daily use.

Important Note

Provodyr is an assistive tool. It is not a substitute for a white cane, a guide dog, or orientation and mobility training, and should be used alongside established navigation methods.