Be My Eyes – Lend your eyes to the blind

Nice idea, but I think it would be better if it were commercial, with the blind user paying, the sighted helper getting paid, and the app developers getting a cut. The payment could be by the minute. I think the general public will be more inclined to treat blind people as equals if we demolish the notion that blind people require charity.<p>Addendum: Lest anyone think I&#x27;m talking out of my ass, here&#x27;s a blog post from a blind programmer who previously had the idea of doing something like this as a business. Unfortunately, it looks like he abandoned that project, since the home page now redirects to something else.<p><a href="https://thewordnerd.info/2014/04/01/perceptron-the-first-real-time-marketplace-for-independent-living-help/" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;thewordnerd.info&#x2F;2014&#x2F;04&#x2F;01&#x2F;perceptron-the-first-rea...</a>

Oddly relevant - a This American Life episode recently explored whether cultural expectations of blind individuals&#x27; abilities have been detrimental[1].<p>1. <a href="http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/544/batman" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thisamericanlife.org&#x2F;radio-archives&#x2F;episode&#x2F;544&#x2F;b...</a>

My only question is how do you handle trolls, idiots, abuse etc?<p>What happens if for example 4chan decides to &#x27;raid&#x27; your app and direct blind people into unfortunate situations. I must admit it&#x27;s a very low act but that&#x27;s my only real thought about this.<p>If abuse wasn&#x27;t a possibility I think the app is 100% amazing.

What the industry needs is OPEN <i>training data</i> for image and voice recognition, which can be annotated by human volunteers and used to improve new algos. This data can be hosted by archive.org under a permissive license.<p>For example, there is a commercial service in the &quot;visual search&quot; space which has been around for a few years, which uses a combination of algos and human employees. It is available as an API and app (8 cents per picture, or $10 per month unlimited).<p><i>&quot;Besides CamFind, the Image Searcher, Inc. team also created TapTapSee, which is a similar app for the blind and visually impaired. It uses image recognition technology with photos taken on your smartphone and then a voice actually speaks the results. This earned the team an Access Award just one week ago from the American Foundation for the Blind&quot;</i>, <a href="http://www.builtinla.com/blog/camfind-brings-visual-search-your-smartphone-putting-google-goggles-test" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.builtinla.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;camfind-brings-visual-search-y...</a><p>An AFB review from 2013 (at that time the app was free), <a href="http://www.afb.org/afbpress/pub.asp?DocID=aw140704" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.afb.org&#x2F;afbpress&#x2F;pub.asp?DocID=aw140704</a><p>How much faster could this research area have moved if the collected data was open? What if Facebook&#x2F;Instagram decided to contribute in some manner, given their large database of photos and tags?

I find the thought of communicating directly with someone a bit anxiety-inducing, but I would really love to volunteer for something like this.<p>I would be happy to transcribe a letter, or product expiry date so that I could be read back to the user with text-to-speech in real-time.<p>I suspect that I&#x27;m in the minority and this is likely a non-issue.

From the little I talked with blind people, I think this could be a great solution for shopping. People I talked with said that crossing streets or moving around ain&#x27;t big problem for them, but one of their biggest pain points are grocery stores. More and more, Mom&amp;Pop stores are replaced by network supermarkets, in which you need to search for the product yourself instead of asking for it, and employees are often not prepared&#x2F;willing to help a blind customer. This app could help a lot here.

Are there any legal consequences if a blind person is helped crossing the street and gets hit by a car?

If only there was an Android version I&#x27;d be on it right now. In fact I think it would actually be quite an enjoyable past time answering requests, especially for lonely people.<p>Think about how interesting it would be to help out a complete stranger from anywhere in the world. I think it would become quite addicting.

I am part of the team who created the app and api.<p>Many blind users use the voice over feature built into ios as @rgoodwintx mentioned.

This is my lack of experience, but how does a blind person launch the app and find the correct button to push? I have toyed around with the Accessibility Features on the iPhone, is there a mode that will speak out what you are tapping on?

Could someone who has used the app tell us about the real-life experience please?

Reminds me of <a href="http://pornfortheblind.org/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;pornfortheblind.org&#x2F;</a> (nsfw) which is a service where people watch and narrate videos for blind people.

After listening to the latest This American Life the first thing that occurs to me is though the intentions of this are good and their are some good uses for it this might have unintended consequences<p>The EP of This American Life is that basically with a little practice most blind people can learn to see with echolocation. Yes I know it sounds incredible but listen to the episode. The TL;DL version would be<p>(1) blind people can learn to echolocate<p>(2) MRI scans prove they are actually seeing, no colors but shapes<p>(3) People that could see but then went blind and learned to echolocate confirm they can see.<p>(4) The fact that most people think blind people can&#x27;t do anything and need and then offer so much help prevents most blind people from learning to echolocate and start seeing.<p>don&#x27;t shoot the messenger.<p><a href="http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/544/batman" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thisamericanlife.org&#x2F;radio-archives&#x2F;episode&#x2F;544&#x2F;b...</a>

It might be nice if your SO&#x2F;parent&#x2F;etc could get first priority, and then outsource if they are not available. That way couples could use the app for their own convenience too.

I watched Charlie Brooker&#x27;s new Black Mirror episode &#x27;White Christmas&#x27; recently, and it deals with technology not entirely dissimilar to this. Well worth a watch.

There&#x27;s a similar market to connect students with tutors, e.g. &quot;I&#x27;m stuck on this physics homework problem, can you help me right now?&quot;<p>Examples:<p><a href="http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/blog/2014/12/15/quickhelp-quickteach-apps-harvard/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bostonmagazine.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2014&#x2F;12&#x2F;15&#x2F;quickhelp...</a><p><a href="http://www.astutetutoring.com/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.astutetutoring.com&#x2F;</a>

The entire project is Open Source – check it out on <a href="http://github.com/bemyeyes/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;bemyeyes&#x2F;</a> !

Why would a blind person carry a touch screen phone??

Great application of remote crowdsourced guidance.<p>Of course the end game is to allow remote &quot;workers&quot; to take control of appliances in your home to do certain tasks that aren&#x27;t easy to automate yet, ie clear the dinner table, wash the dishes, clean up after the dog, etc.<p>Another lucrative application would be remote operation of heavy machinery. Imagine road work with no &quot;Men at Work&quot; signs.

I have installed the app on my iPhone 6, tried to use my Facebook account (but I prefer OAuth to setting up a Facebook account on my device), so I have created an account (through email address) and now the application just crashes every time I launch it.<p>I have uninstalled it and logged in again, but the crash loop is coming back.<p>Otherwise your concept is great, but the app needs improvements from here.

Looks like a novel idea! I&#x27;m wondering what&#x27;s the purpose of giving &quot;points&quot; to the helpers? I can&#x27;t find anywhere in the website mentioning the points&#x27; purpose.<p>It&#x27;s a non-profit&#x2F;charity, and (I think) people understand they won&#x27;t get anything in return (other than good feeling), what&#x27;s with the points? (pure curiosity)

Curious: a couple of the images of &quot;blind&quot; eyes show eyes with no pupils. Forgive my ignorance, but is this common among blind people, or is it a Photoshopism? If a Photoshopism, then is it wise for a website offering services for the blind to misrepresent the physiology of blindness?

This would not work in Brazil, at least currently, where our 3G&#x2F;4G are laughable... But it&#x27;s a good start. The machine learning applicability could be awesome. Maybe one day we can have a smartphone guiding the blind without the need for an actual human to be on the other side.

Sounds like a prime candidate for Amazon&#x27;s Mechanical Turks. Vet &amp; train a core group, and pay them to narrate pictures&#x2F;video. Not hard work, not high pay, but (as a friend has found) there are competent people willing to do such work for humble pay.

Yet another iPhone-only application. I guess I won&#x27;t be helping blind people as an Android peasant ;)<p>Great concept, though, and it being FOSS is a huge plus in my book (and will probably help with developing more applications around this for non-iOS platforms).

Great idea guys, this will benefit the visual impairment community greatly :). I had a similar idea several years ago but for the web. Where you could use a sighted person&#x27;s eyes to navigate a webpage.

I just downloaded it, and I&#x27;m stuck at the &quot;please enable the following to fully join the Be My Eyes network&quot;. I approved all the permissions. Nothing&#x27;s happening.<p>iOS 8.something on an iPhone5.

Now that&#x27;s one of those ideas that are so ingenious that it&#x27;s actually giving me chills. Also, it&#x27;s always great when IT improves people health condition.

Watch out for 4chan. They posted a bunch of strobing GIFs in a epilepsy forum a while back. I wouldn&#x27;t put it past them to find exploiting this app hilarious...

This seems amazing and world changing. Would love to see more apps like this. Downloading now...

Great idea, very pleased to see app with this passion to help and change. Great work

Crossing the street? Really??

Am I the only person that saw this app and immediately thought of google glass?

Mostly sighted users on this app.. when will I be able to see for someone?

Now my eyes are watering. Good job on the introduction video.

Any chance of an Android version?<p>Edit: Sorry, should have looked at the FAQ.

Thanks, really, for showing hope for humanity.

Does the app keep in mind that it&#x27;s nearly impossible for blind people to operate a smartphone? There&#x27;s no keyboard or braille on such a device.

The small heading &quot;Blind Requests Assistance&quot; should probably be rephrased. You don&#x27;t wanna use a disability as a noun like that.

Ok...that is just cool.

Oh what happens if a serial killer uses it to lure blind people in?