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'Be My Eyes' App Crowdsources Help For the Blind
An anonymous reader writes: A new not-for-profit app, Be My Eyes, aims to help the visually-impaired by connecting them with volunteer users who can support them in their daily lives via live video calls. Once downloaded, Be My Eyes asks the user to identify as blind or sighted, to see if you require help or are offering it. When a blind person requests assistance the app scans the system for an available volunteer. The blind user connects with the volunteer over a video call and points to the item they would like described. Be My Eyes was created by Hans Jørgen Wiberg, a visually-impaired entrepreneur, at a startup event. Wiberg teamed up with Robocat, the Danish software studio behind Haze and Thermo, to make his vision a reality.
This sounds like a great idea. I am tempted to be a volunteer. Not sure how it keeps the idiots out who may abuse this. (Yes, there are such people out there!) The FAQ only mentions "People who misuse the system will be excluded from the network." - but it could be too late by then? Perhaps they could 2 volunteers per requester and one of them could be "a moderator"? and silently observe the process to ensure safety of the blind requestor.
...I see what you did there!
the "beer me!" app to ask people close to the fridge to bring you a beer. because you're busy and stuff.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
This is an excellent idea and by rating volunteers the system can weed out the trouble makers who would steer you wrong.
iPhone only is a problem.
On top of that, when I tried to learn android's accessibility options and , the teaching mode pretty much locked me out of my phone - it intercepted every gesture so I had no way of finishing learning how to use it - and that was while looking.
Pointing at something and asking "what is is" isn't a real problem. The real problems are "I need to find 2 socks the same color", "I need my white top and my black skirt", "I need my 'fat jeans' because I'm staying home today", "where's my phone?"
A qr code reader, a barcode reader, and an rfid tag reader (plus some help sewing qr codes inside clothes) would be of far more practical use.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
I bet you can't weed us all out. And why do you assume that we will all be "volunteers" rather than claim that we are blind and see how much fun we can have with the volunteers that way?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Even if I didn't have a penis, there are plenty of attachments that I could purchase to perform the needed tasks.
XDInd
"Hey you! Read this train schedule for me!"
"Sorry, I'm busy, gotta be someplace."
"Come on, come on, read it for me."
"Yeah yeah sure, OK. Hey wait, you're not even blind."
"SHUT UP AND READ MOTHERFUCKER!!!! I HAVE A MOTHERFUCKING APP THAT TELLS YOU WHAT TO DO!!!!!"
Steering some blind person like "Twitch plays Pokemon":
Do that to someone IRL and somebody goes to jail.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
A blind or visually-impaired person can get a friend, relative or trusted volunteer to go with them to the store, do the snail mail, write parts of checks, etc. I know because I do a lot of this stuff for my officemate.
I didn't think the house band in Hell would play this badly.
A blind or visually-impaired person can get a friend, relative or trusted volunteer to go with them to the store, do the snail mail, write parts of checks, etc. I know because I do a lot of this stuff for my officemate.
For sure, but nobody likes being so dependent on someone else. All this app does is change the dependency, not help get (or preserve) autonomy. And from the article, he envisions turning this into a subscription service since it costs money to run, and will cost more if it scales up.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
An interesting episode of This American Life this past weekend demonstrates that the blind can develop natural abilities to help themselves. I'm sure the readers of Slashdot can appreciate a real-life "batman".
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/544/batman
to provide all blind people with a full-time personal assistant for computer use, than to stick with software ADA requirements.
I'm talking about real applications, not your shitty website. But those, too.
Ever done real ADA testing with a reader? Holy shit. I'd much prefer sighted human help to that. It's not like I'd be looking at porn since I can't see.
The fact that you think the only porn on the internet is visual porn is just sooo cute. There is everything from relatively normal smut like literotica and the alt.sex.stories text repository, to the terrifyingly strange erotic fiction that every fan fiction archive contains about every property from Harry Potter to The Bible to My Little Pony. As a person who was born completely blind, I've never had any problems with a shortage of porn. And I'd much rather access it all in privacy with my screen reader, thanks.
On a more serious note, the fact that you find screen reader testing to be difficult is utterly meaningless. Try sitting a die-hard Windows user down with Vi or Emacs, and giving them two hours to write, edit, and print a complex document. You'll get no end of complaining about how difficult and impossible it is. But people who have used the software for 20 years will be just fine, thanks. Screen readers are the same way. I have never met a fully sighted access tester who even had the slightest idea how to use the screen reading software in real life. There is a reason that Jaws For Windows used to come with an audio manual on something like 12 tapes, with 90 minutes of content per tape. And even that didn't cover all of the keyboard shortcuts, tips, tricks, and advanced functions. I would estimate that well over fifty percent of even fully blind people just have no idea how to use their software. IMHO, if you can't hire a fully blind tester, and/or don't have any blind users who can give you feedback, just go with the W3C guidelines and automated tests, or whatever other tests and guidelines are available for your platform, and don't bother with sighted testers.
tired of online ads?
It's only a matter of time before some poor volunteer is asked to describe goatse.
Although not strictly related, makes me remember blind people like Daniel Kish who can use echolocation to do things like ride a bicycle by making clicking noises with his mouth and perceiving the three-dimensional structure of the world around him from the refracted sound waves.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Pretty impressive, and, even as a sighted person, I find this idea interesting for seeing in the dark.
People who are blind, not blind people. Blindness doesn't totally define the person, humanity does.
It's not changing the dependency at all, but it is diffusing the burden on the volunteer, which is more dignified for everyone.
And from the article, he envisions turning this into a subscription service since it costs money to run, and will cost more if it scales up.
I didn't see any indication of a subscription in the articles I read. May I ask where you read that?
Also, from your various posts, you seem rather opposed to this app, or perhaps the general concept. As someone who may be facing more sight-related challenges in the future, it seems like you'd have a lot to gain if this actually works out well in practice as it sounds in concept. May I ask what your specific concerns or complaints are?
I agree that there are a lot of theoretical ways that vision-impaired people could perhaps be better helped than this app, but this seems like something practical that can actually help people right now. That is to say, maybe we shouldn't let perfect be the enemy of good with these sorts of things.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
... http://www.aetonix.com/. The targetdemographic are elderly and disabled, and the focus is communications with family, care providers, and medical staff. Not a tablet, but geared towards those for whom a tablet format isn't quite sufficient.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
It's not changing the dependency at all, but it is diffusing the burden on the volunteer, which is more dignified for everyone.
Really? Really??? When my eyes were so bad that I had to take out a wad of money and ask the cashier to take what was needed while others waited in line because I was slower, the only reason that wasn't humiliating was because the cashiers already knew me. Having to wait for some volunteer to tell me if I got the right change back would have been worse - it would have been an indirect accusation at the cashiers honesty and integrity.
Instead of "diffusing the burden on the volunteer," why not use the technology available to help obviate the need for volunteers instead? Give the phrase "differently enabled" some real meaning instead of being an euphemism for "crippled."
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
These aren't the articles I found last night, one of which was unequivocal, but you can start here:
The app is currently free, but as the firm explained, when its initial funding comes to an end in September 2015, they may consider subscription model or donations.
and here
There’s no current plans to monetise the app, though one future possibility, should demand outstrip supply, is that power users could pay to top up the amount of help they require.
Get them hooked, then charge them money ... the same model both crack dealers and free videogames use. Yes, I'm cynical, especially since not-for-profits can be very profitable for those running them. Sure, offering a service, then charging those who need it the most is a viable business model, but it still sucks.
I believe that they're making it up as they go along.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Be My Eyes is a registered nonprofit organization in Denmark. We have no intention or legal ability of ever making a profit. Our greatest hope is that we can continue to raise money so that blind users have no cost. We are working hard at that, and are grateful to the Velux foundation in Denmark and volunteers inculding people from Robocat for their help.
I get what you're saying, but your statements are not consistent on the issue, as the two quotes I provided show. Consistency of message is needed to build confidence with people, and it hasn't been shown here. It would have been better to say "We haven't finalized our plans for that, so in the meantime we're still open to people's input."
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
nuclear???