by Myra Ross | From BayLines Express, May, 2025
A year ago, I went to New York for one of the first Glidance Demo Days. As a cane user who has had elbow pain caused by my cane use, and as someone who has never liked dogs even though my parents had a succession of them when I was growing up, I was excited to see that someone is creating a third kind of mobility aid. Canes can be challenging particularly for newly blind elderly people, and the waitlists for dogs are pretty long.
I was thrilled by Glide’s possibilities especially since I had worked with Amos Miller, the founder and CEO of Glidance when I participated in a couple of his working sessions about Soundscape at the 2019 ACB conference in Rochester, New York. Soundscape (now recreated as Voice Vista) was the brainchild of Amos Miller when he worked for Microsoft. A blind engineer, Miller is now devoting his significant ingenuity and knowhow to Glidance with the goal of creating a viable third kind of mobility aid for blind people with all levels of experience and independent mobility skills. I was hooked, and in July, I invested in the project by ordering one, knowing it was then in the infancy of development and that it would be quite a while before it was ready for prime time. I was happy that they sought extensive feedback from blind end users so that it would be the best it could be upon release. As developers, they were going to live “nothing about us without us.”
Two weeks ago, I attended the Glidance Demo Day in Boston. Before we did our individual demos, they told us that there was no navigation software loaded and that the hardware they had on hand was not their latest version. I was pretty disappointed that I was not going to experience the unit that Miller showcases in their YouTube videos. Compared with the original demo unit I saw in New York last year, this iteration of Glide has a lighter form factor with bigger wheels, and the Glidance engineer who ran the demos was not using a remote-control device to operate it as he had last year. I pushed Glide easily, and it did indeed propel me around obstacles and turn the corner when I told it to with my hand. It did come to a dead stop when the engineer jumped out in front of me, and again when he instructed me to quickly walk straight at the wall in front of me. I could see how it could be very helpful in “Freestyle” mode, which is the only way the Glide can be used at the moment.
When I got home, I emailed Glidance to express my disappointment at what they had shown us, and to ask when I, as a “founding Glider,” would be able to get my hands on the real thing as a beta tester to see what it can do where I live. There are sidewalks on one side of the street if there are sidewalks at all. There are T and Y intersections with no sidewalks. One must walk on seriously potholed streets that are not flat. The sidewalks are often broken by large tree roots. If Glide works here, it will be rather good, but will it? My Boston Demo Day experience did not show me anything that would help me figure that out.
Imagine my surprise and delight when I got an email from Amos Miller requesting a Zoom meeting. He said he was grateful for my candor in the email I sent, and apologized for not having shown a more advanced unit in Boston. In our Zoom, he asked about where I live, about my blindness journey, and about my reasons for purchasing a Glide. I said that I allegedly have good skills about which I need more confidence, but that I would just like to enjoy going out for a walk without having to think about the immediate environment with almost every step I take as cane users do. He said that is the goal, and that it is almost the reality with the Glide unit that he himself is using now. He told me that the plan is first to perfect the hardware, and that the increasingly capable software will follow. He said that navigation software like Voice Vista or hardware like the Stellar Trek can be used with the Glide, independently now, and eventually possibly integrated into the Glide. In other words, the Glide will be released first as a mobility aid, but increasingly as its software develops it will also become a navigation aid.
Then Miller told me that unfortunately there would be a delay in the release of the Glide. They have found that they need to make the hardware more durable, and they need to secure their supply chain in the face of the tariff-born manufacturing uncertainties. I actually am not surprised at the delay although I am disappointed. Even before our recently created global economic crisis, many initial product releases of all kinds have been delayed. I remain excited about using Glide next spring, and maybe even before if I am chosen as a beta tester. This invention is likely to be a game changer for some, hopefully for me, and many others.