“Twenty years ago, my grandmother started going blind. She was married for fifty years, and my grandpa had just passed. She’s 93 now.

I watched her move into assisted living, the nursing home, and her eyesight fade. Her ability to volunteer stopped and her world shrunk to a single room.

No laptop or TV, no cell phone, she’s never used a smart device. She can dial local numbers by feeling the buttons on a land-line next to her bed. But I live a thousand miles away.

She’s one of the sharpest people I know, yet the only tech she has access to is tape-based audio books.

HALVAR AI started there — the need to create a solution that provides presence, dignity, and intellectual freedom to everyone that’s been overlooked — even us who think we’re lucky enough to have the world fit in our pocket, yet can no longer see the room.”