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Show HN: I created a PoC for live descriptions of the surroundings for the blind

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Re: Show HN: I created a PoC for live descriptions of the surroundings for the blind

#14

Blind person here. I don't see a point to this over just using a cell phone app to do this, which are slowly starting to appear.

Yes, apps for this is for sure the best solution. Hopefully something like "Be My AI" in combination with consumer products such as Ray-Ban Meta, where you can get descriptions without telling the world that you are requesting descriptions.

I have not done any app development, and for this project I wanted to keep some things simple to focus on what can be expected from a low quality camera in combination with AI for descriptions.

Re: Show HN: I created a PoC for live descriptions of the surroundings for the blind

#15
post #10

Nice work! You may be interested in a paper that explored a similar concept and included some interesting ways of dealing with latency called WorldScribe: https://worldscribe.org .

Very interesting. This in combination with something that "tracks" described object not needing to describe them again would be a game changer.

Re: Show HN: I created a PoC for live descriptions of the surroundings for the blind

#17

Blind person here. I don't see a point to this over just using a cell phone app to do this, which are slowly starting to appear.

Hi! Could you tell me what are your favorite devices / apps to get descriptions of scenery? Are you a coder? Would you point me to the best setup for coding for a blind person? Thanks

Re: Show HN: I created a PoC for live descriptions of the surroundings for the blind

#18

Did you consult with your target audience — ie. blind or low-vision people — before or during development?

Yes. My partner is visually impaired so that is one of the reasons why I think this is interesting to investigate. The current solution is way to "janky" to actually use, but gives insight in the problem to solve.

My hope is that there will be "cheap" camera glasses that you can use different services for image descriptions. There is a company called "Be My Eyes" that is developing an AI tool for image descriptions, which probably is miles better than anything I can come up with. https://www.bemyeyes.com/blog/introducing-be-my-ai

Be My Eyes seem to support Ray-Ban Meta glasses, so hopefully "Be My AI" will too.

I understand the "not consulting the target audience" all too well, for instance braille signs that are at eye-level and is hard to find. Some workplaces is very keen to make accessibility adjustments, but mostly if they are seen so that they can show others that adjustments have been done, regardless if they actually help or not.

Re: Show HN: I created a PoC for live descriptions of the surroundings for the blind

#20

Check out my reverse-engineering/cracking of Microsoft's App just doing that, SeeingAI. https://altayakkus.substack.com/p/you-wouldnt-download-an-ai

This was a great read. At this point, any org should assume on-device models are public
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