I had been contacted by Shelley Fowler (yes, that Shelley Fowler) a few months back about some new tech I had to see. But “seeing” the tech wasn’t quite right. It was something different. The company is Lundy and they were working on an app aimed at “bringing data accessibility to your MLS”. Shelley arranged an introduction with Lundy’s founder Justin Lundy.
Basically, the app which they are now calling “Finding Homes” works with Alexa to help people who are blind or visually impaired access real estate data. Apparently, 12 million people over 40 years old in the US have vision impairment. 1 million are legally blind
Now there have been other products using Alexa for real estate, Voiceter Pro comes to mind. The difference with Lundy’s product is there are focusing on helping the blind and visually impaired, not a supplemental search tool.
Flash forward to CMLS 2022. Shelley once again greeted me to come to their booth and asked me to put on an eye mask and some noise-canceling headphones. Kinky!
With the mask and headphones on, they demonstrated on an iPad how blind people use “screen readers” on websites. It was terrible! The computer voice says stuff like “upper navigation”, “side bar-side bar”, and “vertical navigation bar”. Basically what I called “HTML out loud”. Just awful.
When that demo was over I was then asked to give Alexa a simple command, something like (I can’t remember exactly what I said) “Alexa, property details of 123 Main Street….” And voila! The device gave me an overview of the property without all the “HTML out loud” junk. I could ask it other simple questions, like “what is the lot size?”, “how many square feet”. Sweet!
I have to say, the way they demonstrated the app was really cool. It gave you an excellent way of understanding the problem they are trying to solve.
I will also say that while their focus may be targeting the blind and the visually impaired the experience they created is super well done. So well done they might have a bigger market than they think.
I believe they launched or are about to launch with Stellar MLS, MetroList, and a few others. You should visit their site to find out more.
