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Be My Eyes – Lend your eyes to the blind

bemyeyes.org

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Re: Be My Eyes – Lend your eyes to the blind

#71

Post by detaro »

yodon wrote: post #48
mwcampbell wrote: post #21

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. Addendum: Lest anyone think I'm talking out of my ass, here's a blog post from…

Blindness is unfortunately a nearly crushing disability economically. 74% of the blind are unemployed [1] (there is another figure you will occasionally also see of 13% unemployment for the blind, that's a US Government statistic that excludes anyone who is not considered in the list of potentially employed people). Equally important for HN-type readers to know is that Braille literacy is highly correlated with emplo…

Wow, I would not have expected those low Braille literacy figures. For the UK, numbers seem to be similar. I couldn't find any for other European countries, but at least here in Germany Braille markings are very common, so I'd always thought that most blind can use them.

Re: Be My Eyes – Lend your eyes to the blind

#72

Post by simonster »

memonkey wrote: post #59
adamvalve wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the first thought I had. The expectation here is that the blind need help, which may not be the case. The interesting thing to me was that the blind can "see" through echo location. Very cool stuff.

SOME blind people can see using echo location. From what I understand, children can learn faster in detecting objects with sound vs someone much older where it may take much longer. There is a pretty good Wiki on it that explains more and includes some people from the show[1]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_echolocation

There are also various auditory vision substitution systems (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_substitution#Auditory_v...). The vOICe creators claim that blind individuals can achieve the equivalent 20/250 vision with a week of training (http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/dec/07/voice-soundsc...).

Re: Be My Eyes – Lend your eyes to the blind

#73

Post by falcolas »

yodon wrote: post #48
mwcampbell wrote: post #21

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. Addendum: Lest anyone think I'm talking out of my ass, here's a blog post from…

Blindness is unfortunately a nearly crushing disability economically. 74% of the blind are unemployed [1] (there is another figure you will occasionally also see of 13% unemployment for the blind, that's a US Government statistic that excludes anyone who is not considered in the list of potentially employed people). Equally important for HN-type readers to know is that Braille literacy is highly correlated with emplo…

The tools around Braille are expensive. Braille computer displays and typewriters are all in the thousands of dollars. Books are in the hundreds of dollars, and hard to obtain.

Screen readers, the computer replacement for Braille, are also stupidly expensive (one I looked up was $900 for the home edition).

Re: Be My Eyes – Lend your eyes to the blind

#74

Post by modzilla »

ndarilek wrote: post #67
mwcampbell wrote: post #21

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. Addendum: Lest anyone think I'm talking out of my ass, here's a blog post from…

Actually, I haven't abandoned it--literally working on it this very minute, in fact. :) The problem is that multi-platform video interchange is a hard problem. Very hard. SIP only gets you so far even with web RTC, then you hit issues where server X doesn't like delegating authentication to anything else, Y does but requires super-indepth knowledge of the protocol, and Z may or may not but it's got so many modules it…

I don't know the answer to your question but it should be a required exercise for every web developer to use their website with a screen reader and a blindfold. It would change the way they/we build websites.

I would submit an issue to HN to fix their accessibility – there is no excuse (for HN) not to.

Edit: Sentence subject-ambiguity clarification.

Re: Be My Eyes – Lend your eyes to the blind

#76

Post by kin »

wiradikusuma wrote: post #27

Looks like a novel idea! I'm wondering what's the purpose of giving "points" to the helpers? I can't find anywhere in the website mentioning the points' purpose. It's a non-profit/charity, and (I think) people understand they won't get anything in return (other than good feeling), what's with the points? (pure curiosity)

It's also a way to establish trust between the blind and the volunteers. I haven't used the app but I imagine the blind can somehow (via voice?) specify a certain threshold of "points". Otherwise, there might be some uncool people out there doing uncool things.

Re: Be My Eyes – Lend your eyes to the blind

#77

Post by orblivion »

ikt wrote: post #16

My only question is how do you handle trolls, idiots, abuse etc? What happens if for example 4chan decides to 'raid' your app and direct blind people into unfortunate situations. I must admit it's a very low act but that's my only real thought about this. If abuse wasn't a possibility I think the app is 100% amazing.

This also was my first thought, and my second thought was to solve it through redundancy.

Re: Be My Eyes – Lend your eyes to the blind

#79

Post by ssalenik »

nagiek wrote: post #75

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

Both iOS and Android now have pretty good accessibility features for the blind. I think iOS is still slightly ahead though. Basically the phone reads out the button or action when you put your finger over it and you have to double tap to click. When you go to a new screen, it reads out the contents.

You can try it yourself if you have an iOS or Android phone by enabling the feature. But I've met blind people who use their touch screen smart phones every day.

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