THE STORY:

Three years ago Susan Perry and her 23 year-old niece Jessica stopped for lunch at a Miami restaurant . Jessica’s macular degeneration prevented her from reading restaurant menus at any range, so she asked her aunt to read the menu to her.

Fishing for her reading glasses, Susan realized she had forgotten them and struggled with the small type and the restaurant lighting. No accommodation for the visually impaired was available and, almost joking, she suggested to her niece that restaurants ought to provide their patrons with menus that could speak to them.

As the idea began to take hold, Susan consulted with colleague Richard Herbst, an electronically savvy designer, who assured her that such a device could be built. Following rounds of design conferences, a prototype was fabricated by a US engineering firm eventually resulting in the production version of   Menus That Talk®.