SafeStride wins Rep. Jamie Raskin’s 2025 Congressional App Challenge in Maryland’s Eighth District

When asked what inspired the creation of SafeStride, the students said, “My grandparents grew up in China, and when I visited my dad’s side of the family in Shandong Province, I saw firsthand the challenges people face there. Close to a quarter of the province’s population are farmers living on less than $3,500 USD per year. The house my grandparents lived in was incredibly shabby—if you jumped too high, you could hit the roof and it might come crashing down (I do not recommend). You’d definitely end up with a head full of dust, though. There wasn’t even a bathroom inside; instead, there was an outhouse 50 feet away from the house. To flush, you had to pour a bucket of water into the makeshift toilet the old-fashioned way. It was clear that people living there had very limited resources.

“Standing there, I started wondering: what do residents like this do if they have low vision or are blind? Where do they go for help? When I asked my grandparents, they told me about two government programs—the Shandong Association of the Blind and the Rukang Home Program. That’s great, I thought. But then I realized that wasn’t the full story. In places like Jonglei State, South Sudan; Sana’a Governorate, Yemen; Helmand Province, Afghanistan; Ouham-Pendé Prefecture, Central African Republic; Puntland State, Somalia, and countless other regions around the world, there is no government-led support for people with visual impairments.

“Even when blind or low-vision people turn to modern technology, it’s usually out of reach. The startup dotLumen makes smart glasses for the blind that cost over $8,000. Biped.ai makes a wearable AI device that runs over $6,000. These are incredible technologies, but they’re not accessible to the people who need them most. We wanted to create something different—something that didn’t require other humans to be constantly involved, something that didn’t cost a fortune, and something that could actually outperform existing tools like canes and guide dogs. That’s why we built SafeStride.

“We knew from the start that this really couldn’t just be another expensive tech solution. Every design decision, from using cloud processing to avoid hardware costs, to making it work with any smartphone camera, was driven by that visit to Shandong and the realization that billions of people need technology that actually fits their reality, not just ours.”