[HN Gopher] Be My Eyes
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Be My Eyes
Author : EndXA
Score : 269 points
Date : 2021-01-15 17:08 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bemyeyes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bemyeyes.com)
| breiti wrote:
| I once helped some guy with his pin number via this app. It
| really is awesome. Have this app installed since 3 years
| blakesterz wrote:
| WOW!
|
| 4,454,919 VOLUNTEERS and 277,697 BLIND & LOW-VISION PEOPLE
|
| That's a great ratio! Is it safe to say anytime someone needs
| help they're able to get it?
| ehsankia wrote:
| It is pretty awesome. Honestly the one complaint I've heard is
| that helpers are sad that they aren't getting more calls and
| get super excited when they finally get one. Which really is
| the best kind of the problem to have.
| pfortuny wrote:
| I've received some 8 calls, and being outrun several other
| times... It feels like losing a race!
| pranavjoneja wrote:
| Yep, I've been a helper for 2 years now and I've only
| received 2 calls
| bluGill wrote:
| More importantly it means that a blind person isn't constantly
| bothering the same few people all the time. If every blind
| person needs help once a day, every volunteer only needs to
| help once a week. This means you can be helpful without being
| annoyed by how often a stranger is bothering you.
| adkadskhj wrote:
| On that note, i made a comment in another thread here about
| how i'm terrified of getting something wrong/etc. However, if
| the app were to connect me more frequently with people i've
| positively helped, bonded with, etc _(mutually i imagine,
| tinder-esque hah)_ , it feels less intimidating to mess up if
| i knew the person a bit.
|
| It seems to me part of my fear resolves around a vacuum of
| fire and forget - never being able to correct my mistake, or
| help them more to make up for it, or etc.
|
| Plus building relationships is neat hah.
| mlang23 wrote:
| Indeed, the ratio works out, at least for me. I get help even
| at night time. As far as I understand, the algorithms uses
| distance _and_ language to find a helper. So if nobody near me
| is awake, I can still get help from people speaking my language
| which live in a different timezone.
| abawany wrote:
| I've received calls but by the time I pick up (between 2-3
| rings) someone else has already picked up the call and is
| likely helping the caller. I've had the app on my phone for
| nearly a year and haven't yet been able to handle a call so it
| seems that people are getting the help promptly when they need
| it.
| switch007 wrote:
| And that is AMAZING
| mgamache wrote:
| I worked with Google Glass (Enterprise) in the past and think
| this might be a really good use case for Glass... Realtime
| streaming without using hands. Voice activation and a speaker in
| your ear all could be really helpful.
| bumbada wrote:
| This is like having a spy on the street 24/7, but instead of
| cameras above like in London, cameras everywhere sending data
| from all the world to the USA for being analyzed and recorded
| forever.
|
| For me this is dystopia. You can't get out of your house
| without being recorded all the time, just like in China.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| This is a really dark interpretation and I think doesn't
| fully consider the facts on the ground. Such cameras are
| liable to capture minutes per day of footage from a tiny
| minority of individuals conspicuously holding up their phones
| and talking to an agent.
|
| Statistically probably zero minutes of your life will be
| captured by parties using this annually while you are
| constantly captured on security cameras everywhere you go in
| public.
|
| Your concern is approximately like a gut shot individual
| worrying if they might or might not get a splinter.
| elil17 wrote:
| A dystopia where blind people (>4% of the population if you
| include all major visual impairments) occasionally livestream
| (but don't store) video in public places? There's plenty of
| dystopian things about our world but this is about 1000x less
| invasive than CCTV cameras.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Okay - but imagine if the hardware's _trusted_. I think it 's
| a good idea, if the glasses aren't controlled by a
| surveillance capitalism company.
| snuii wrote:
| People who have used this app, which kind of situations have you
| helped with? I want to help but am a bit nervous
| KingPrad wrote:
| I've handled 2 calls (and missed a few others).
|
| 1. Woman asking what color a sweater was, to confirm its color.
| Was maybe a 30 second call.
|
| 2. Teenager with a box of paint supplies wondering if the box
| has an expiration date, since the paint felt weirdly thick. 2
| minute call, then we chatted a few minutes.
| miki123211 wrote:
| I was the one who needed help, not the one who helped, but my
| issue was some handwriting ion a piece of paper that OCR
| couldn't deal with. The handwriting wasn't in english, and Be
| My Eyes is the only service of this kind that lets you select a
| different language. I received help, and the process went
| pretty smoothly.
| ska wrote:
| How complicated is it to initiate a call? I've only seen the
| other side.
| miki123211 wrote:
| Pretty easy. You open the app, click "call first available
| volunteer", and you're good to go. There's also a
| "specialized help" button, which lets you quickly connect
| to accessibility support hotlines for some companies, like
| Google and Microsoft for example.
| habi wrote:
| I helped a person who needed to find out which container in his
| fridge contained low-fat or high-fat milk. Another person just
| asked me about the color of two shirts that were lying on the
| bed that he/she wanted to wear.
| ska wrote:
| Here are things I have helped with
|
| * find their friend in park when they got separated (mentioned
| elsewhere)
|
| * differentiate canned food when their system got messed up
| (e.g. canned corn vs canned beans, same size cans)
|
| * figure out which of two sweaters was the red one
|
| * reorganize paper money that had fallen out of pocket/wallet
| michaelmrose wrote:
| I wonder if at least some of that might someday be done
| equally well by a computer which would be available 24/7
| kadoban wrote:
| Someday probably, but those are some fairly varied tasks
| and I suspect they're more difficult than they initially
| sound.
| gowld wrote:
| Color and text recognition are pretty well solved.
| ska wrote:
| First order color in good lighting is easy: is this
| sweater red or blue. Much harder "does this scarf match
| this sweater".
|
| text recognition is only solved in pretty well controlled
| situations also.
|
| Contextual adjustment in situations like this is
| something humans are really good at. You can easily
| imagine an automated system that works for some of these
| things, but is much slower and harder to use.
| turbopony wrote:
| Helped someone complete a severely dated captcha on a
| government form. I get the impression most tasks are gonna be
| fairly mundane.
| fiveleavesleft wrote:
| This. The number of calls I get from this app for people
| struggling to enter captchas in non-accessibility friendly
| websites is not funny. Such websites should be named and
| shamed somewhere in today's age. This is from India, BTW.
|
| Other situations I got calls for: - Help with
| navigating the installation wizard of some software. -
| A person trying to locate his right-foot's slipper while he
| had the other one on. This was a really wild one where I had
| to ask him to walk around the room, show underneath the bed,
| around some other objects etc. But to no avail. Finally, he
| thanked and disconnected saying he was tired :(. - Help
| with reading railway tickets, magazine articles, textbook
| chapters.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| There was a lawsuit here in the US against dominos that
| stated that the ADA ought to apply to a company's online
| presence as well as to their physical location. Hopefully
| in the long term such sites will have to be accessible.
| gowld wrote:
| That lawsuit said that Domino's had to give phone users
| the online-order discount. (Can't charge more for
| disability accomodations.)
| philshem wrote:
| - two guys wanted to know what boxes of cereal they had
|
| - read recipients for 30+ pieces of mail
|
| - read prescription med bottle refill instructions
|
| (As the reader, the app has the feature to turn on the
| flashlight of the remote smartphone. It's often quite dark in
| the room!)
| codazoda wrote:
| An aside...
|
| In the early 2000's I created an app called ButtonWiz that made
| web buttons. I was in a funny mood and gave the buttons crazy
| descriptive names like "spicy fire red".
|
| I started to get lots of registrations on the new version and
| then I started to get positive feedback from users with vision
| impairments. Apparently, they liked selecting the buttons with my
| quirky names. It was a pretty cool niche to serve.
| mikefoitzik wrote:
| I actually felt good and hopeful for the future after reading
| about this company/service. I am curious if you have any public
| articles written about your "purpose and profit" model and how it
| is working out / evolving. It could be quite inspirational for
| entrepreneurs trying to come up with ideas that help the world
| and are economically viable at the same time.
| unix_fan wrote:
| I've heard great things about this app from other blind friends,
| but I'm still not sure if I should try it out. I am introverted,
| and still don't like talking to strangers on the phone, which is
| why I prefer using apps with OCR or object recognition.
| ska wrote:
| I suspect there are use cases that this is just a really good
| fit for. One session I had was helping a person find their
| friend in a park when they had got separated. I'm sure she
| could have managed other ways, but this was very quick (at
| least at my end).
| pfortuny wrote:
| The thing is: its totally anonymous and there is afaik no way
| to know who either party is. I feel you can benefit a lot from
| it.
|
| The people I have helped range from a total computer specialist
| who could not read something (I was astonished at the things he
| did with te computer) to a lady asking me whether her dress was
| stained or not.
|
| In any case, try to guve it a try!
| ska wrote:
| This is a very cool service, I've been signed up for a while now.
|
| It does have a small usability problem, perhaps because of the
| balance of "volunteers" and people it is serving. You get a
| number of incomplete calls or unclear notifications, and because
| it doesn't happen often it's hard to remember how it should be
| responding.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| If volunteers also help out with crossing busy intersections... i
| hope they have smart and strong moderation etc. to keep dangerous
| trolls out!
|
| Heart warming idea nonetheless :)
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I'm encouraged that trolls have not ruined this yet.
| k__ wrote:
| It sounded like a good idea until I saw that it was synchronous
| and video based.
|
| Makes total sense, but I thought volunteering answering some
| questions about photos people upload there when I have some time
| to spare.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Most problems that people encounter are synchronous. I cannot
| even think of a single scenario where identifying things in a
| picture would be useful to anyone after the fact. It's not
| surprising that they don't offer a service that wouldn't be
| useful to anyone.
| gowld wrote:
| There are plenty of times where someone can wait 5 minutes
| for an answer.
| ska wrote:
| It works pretty well anyway, they have some sort of request
| queue management so that if you don't pick up pretty quickly it
| will try others, and from the outside looks like they probably
| try multiple people anyway.
|
| So if you get a notification and you are available, great.
| Otherwise someone else will get it.
| staunch wrote:
| Yeah, this is such a cool thing. The kind of thing I remember
| talking with people about before smartphones made it actually
| possible.
|
| Lots of stuff like that is happening and it's exciting!
| 5evOX5hTZ9mYa9E wrote:
| I had this on my phone for 10+ months and I never got a call. I
| also speak multiple languages, and still nothing...
| michaelmrose wrote:
| This might actually be of interest to the developers. Maybe
| there is some reason you never get picked. I worked with
| someone who couldn't log into any company systems for his first
| month because it didn't like his name.
| snoshy wrote:
| It's more just that they have a 16:1 ratio of volunteers to
| blind/low-vision people. Many others on this thread have
| reported the same. It's a great problem to have as a free
| service.
| miki123211 wrote:
| Another similar service is Aira[1].
|
| The main difference is that Aira is not free, but you're helped
| by professional agents, who had to undergo various background
| checks and sign airtight NDAs. They have a 5-minutes-per day free
| plan, and businesses can also offer free service if you're using
| Aira with one of their products.
|
| My biggest frustration with Aira is that you need to own a phone
| number in one of the supported countries, which is a pain to set
| up and maintain.
|
| All agents also have TeamViewer installed, so they can quickly
| and efficiently help with computer issues. I've been using it for
| over a year now (with the free plan), and I definitely recommend.
| saas_sam wrote:
| Isn't every NDA basically the same? What makes theirs
| especially "airtight"?
| darig wrote:
| It seems like the bigger issue is liability when you tell
| them to cross the road and didn't notice an approaching car
| that kills them.
| miki123211 wrote:
| Airtight, as in, people routinely use this to interact with
| sensitive corporate data, probably including PII (but not
| sure), with full approval from their legal department. Aira
| signing agreements with companies to provide accommodations
| for employees is not unheard of. It basically provides
| blindness accommodations as a service.
|
| Edit: there's also a pretty rigorous screening / background
| checking process. As far as I remember, the number of people
| who actually manage to get through it is somewhere below 10%.
| gknoy wrote:
| My guess is the money to pay lawyers to enforce the NDA in
| court. (If I make you sign the NDA, but can't sue you when
| you break it, it's useless.))
| mlang23 wrote:
| Be My Eyes is my personal favourite service in the 21st century.
|
| It has helped me in countless times since I use it. From
| identifying a dead mouse my cat apparently hunted to creating a
| makeshift talking LCD display by pointing your phone at it. There
| are OCR apps of course, but they dont always work in some
| situations. It is a total relief to have a pair of human eyes in
| your pocket available at every time of the day.
|
| Thanks Be My Eyes, you changed my life!
| [deleted]
| ricardbejarano wrote:
| This is one of the most beautiful ways I've seen tech put to
| work.
|
| Thanks for being so kind, this is awesome!
| ajyey wrote:
| I've only received a couple calls in the time I've had the app
| but my overall experience was great. Helped a guy cross a busy
| intersection and another woman pick out some low-fat milk. Feels
| good to help man.
| fastball wrote:
| Busy intersection seems mildly dangerous given the possibility
| of lag.
| bluGill wrote:
| 2 seconds lag is pretty long, and easy to notice. Nobody can
| cross the street in 2 seconds. So if there isn't enough
| margin of safety to be sure it is safe with the lag, then
| there wasn't enough without it too.
|
| Most likely the help was just help find the button and then
| tell the blind person when the walk light lit up. Most busy
| intersections have a light for pedestrians, but many do not
| have any help for the blind. This is very much region
| specific - when I was in Germany all lights had a beep (in
| that one city). I've never heard such beeps elsewhere, but
| things can and do change faster than I travel to other
| cities.
| deepinthewoods wrote:
| Lights in the UK have a small cone on the bottom of the
| button box that turns when the light is green
| https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-ouch-22706881
| RealStickman_ wrote:
| In Switzerland the beeping lights exist as well. Mostly in
| city centres though and not at the edges of a city or in
| smaller towns.
| spoonjim wrote:
| I would be terrified of getting the guy killed
| adkadskhj wrote:
| Yea, i'm with you. I worry about all the tiny little
| details and this type of app is wide open and my concern
| that i would get something wrong is near crippling my
| desire to help.
|
| It's definitely my own neurosis here, but my desire to help
| is proportional to my desire to _not hurt them_. I 'd love
| to help them, but i _really_ don 't want to mess something
| up for them either.
| spoonjim wrote:
| Well it's entirely possible that they have to cross the
| street, so if nobody helps them on the app they just go
| ahead and pray for the best. But getting involved makes
| me feel responsible, not to mention the possible legal
| liability.
| jack_riminton wrote:
| Very cool
|
| Is there one for deaf people? i.e. converse over video and text
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| There's a little-known feature of iOS called "sound
| recognition" that constantly listens and pops up an alert when
| it recognizes certain sounds that need attention, such as a
| crying baby, doorbell, or siren.
|
| https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/sound-recognition-iph...
|
| I'm not deaf but I can imagine that being very useful.
| jack_riminton wrote:
| Wow that's actually pretty cool. Would be useful for hearing
| people too if they're wearing headphones
| bluGill wrote:
| I don't know of any apps, but 20 years ago at least there were
| state run services for this. You call a number and someone will
| translate between your voice call and the ttd that the deaf
| use. (20 years ago a friend of mine worked for such a service,
| we have both moved on but I assume the service still exists)
| elil17 wrote:
| There's of remote sign language interpretation and real time
| captioning services available. In the US, we have publicly
| funded video relay service (which translates between sign
| language and English for phone calls) and captioned calling
| (which provides captions for telephone calls). There are
| commercial equivalents of these services available for in
| person interactions and other countries.
|
| Gallaudet, a college for Deaf students, even has videophone
| booths you can use for video relay service:
| https://createyourworldbook.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/d...
| wnissen wrote:
| It's a free government service in the US. 711 is the number for
| the relay service from TDD - voice. Unfortunately it is
| sometimes abused.
| gowld wrote:
| My understanding is that it's majority abuse -- people
| outside USA using it to call electronics stores to try to
| make fruadulent orders (to the point where stores refuse
| service to TDD users), and phone companies collecting huge
| fees for running the service.
| theartfuldodger wrote:
| I have has this app installed for at least a year, but only
| received one call that ended up being a training/example call. It
| seems well made, just perhaps more volunteers than users
| shaunxcode wrote:
| This is really cool! I wonder if it works with the mic as well so
| you can be someones ears.
| posharma wrote:
| There's also https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/ai/seeing-ai
| pfortuny wrote:
| I have interacted several times with blind people through this
| app and, honestly, I feel I have received much more than I have
| given.
|
| Truly recommend.
| mistergrady wrote:
| I've gotten one call in 3 years of having the app (helped a
| woman program her Instapot) and I feel the same way
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