Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Be My Eyes – Lend your eyes to the blind

bemyeyes.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 165 posts

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

#81

Post by TuringTest »

ndarilek wrote: post #70
kszx wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For these kinds of services, the introduction of a payment can change supply and demand in very unexpected ways. Example: There once was an experiment with blood donations, where a payment for the blood donation actually decreased the number of people who were willing to donate. Apparently, receiving a payment for an activity that seems charitable makes some people feel bad. A similar effect might happen if Blind My…

As a blind person, I find the idea that my borrowing someone's eyes is viewed as a charitable thing somewhat bothersome, particularly if I'm doing it to use my time more efficiently. Put another way, sure I can wait 6 hours or so until a sightling happens to be around so I can read a letter, but how is me paying a few bucks for someone's time to do it now any different than you paying for Uber, Lyft, etc. instead of…

It's not more charitable than contributing content to Wikipedia. By gamifying the service or otherwise rewarding those who lend their eyes in some non-monetary way, participating in the app is a form of entertainment that brings its own reward.

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

#82

Post by walterbell »

What the industry needs is OPEN training data 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.

For example, there is a commercial service in the "visual search" 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).

"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", http://www.builtinla.com/blog/camfind-brings-visual-search-y...

An AFB review from 2013 (at that time the app was free), http://www.afb.org/afbpress/pub.asp?DocID=aw140704

How much faster could this research area have moved if the collected data was open? What if Facebook/Instagram decided to contribute in some manner, given their large database of photos and tags?

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

#83

Post by Tloewald »

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…

It would be interesting to use something like bitcoin for social capital -- literally a favor bank.

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

#84

Post by cgag »

JshWright wrote: post #54
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…

I'd suggest (almost) exactly the opposite, actually... Charge $5/mo to be a 'helper' and keep it free for blind users. I suspect there are enough folks out there who would be happy to pay $5 for the opportunity to help others (maybe I'm too much of an optimist though... who knows...) That way you cover costs, and filter out a lot of potential trolls.

Paying someone to be a middleman on my volunteer charity work feels pretty gross.

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

#85

Post by dntrkv »

khebbie wrote: post #13

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

One problem that I see (you guys might already address this) but if I'm a helper and I get a call from a blind person and I have just a couple minutes to help but the blind person needs 10 minutes of help it would be inefficient to connect me with them. One way to solve this would be for the blind to select a time range of how much help they need (1 minute, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, etc...) and then when it calls the helper it will show how much help is needed, so they can either decline or go into the call knowing how long they will be busy for.

Also you may be able to introduce pricing in this way, where anything under 5 minutes is free, but over 5 minutes you charge however much per minute and then split the cost with the helper.

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

#86

Post by ndarilek »

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…

Also, something else that bothers me a bit about lots of the comments in this thread:

It's nice that people want to keep things free and to avoid the influence that money might bring to a thing. But the unfortunate reality is that we live in a society that doesn't let me buy groceries, beer or housing with goodwill. Sure, help is a good thing, and I'm the last person who wants to live in a society where our interactions are commoditized. But there's a cost for the convenience of near-instantly beaming that help to your phone/desktop/smart glasses. Put simply, I'm just as much a consumer as are you, and I think that regarding services like these as something that should be given away for free is a big reason there's next to zero innovation in how I as a blind person interact with my world.

Put more practically, I've probably spent ~$100 on audio-only games in the course of my lifetime (would likely be more, I'm just not a huge gamer.) Additionally, I've purchased Twitter clients, book readers and other apps specifically designed to be highly accessible because their mainstream equivalents aren't, or their accessibility implementations are laughably bad (see Kindle for PC, which I'd rather crack Kindle content than use.) We're here, we're buying things, and while there's certainly a large segment of the community that will vocally complain if things aren't free, we're happy to fund new innovation for folks who can deliver something beyond another currency/color identifier or minor screen reader iteration.

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

#87

Post by rdez6173 »

I find the thought of communicating directly with someone a bit anxiety-inducing, but I would really love to volunteer for something like this.

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.

I suspect that I'm in the minority and this is likely a non-issue.

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

#88

Post by kall »

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…

Taptapsee[1] is a similar app that is commercial. Its a bit more limited / streamlined, in that it only sends one picture and one textual description instead of doing a video chat, but it does work really well. I agree that making it a commercial service can be a positive thing, because it makes a blind user not feel any guilt over using the service excessively. On the other the financial situations of people with disabilities are quite different in different countries, so my perspective here is limited.

[1] http://www.taptapseeapp.com

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

#89

Post by walterbell »

JshWright wrote: post #64
yawz wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm assuming (maybe wrongly and naively) that those are already solved problems. I'm assuming a visually impaired person already has his/her routines to avoid those problems. That's why I wanted to hear from the users of the app. For example, a volunteer who helped someone.

Here's an example from real life (in person, not via this app). I have a buddy who is blind. In the US, paper currency is all the same size and shape, so it's impossible to distinguish them by feel alone. He uses a system of folds to remember which bill is which, but if he drops one, or the cashier doesn't tell him what the denominations are, etc..., he ends up not know which bill is which. Occasionally that means he…

This iOS currency recognition app is accurate and easy to use. If only more visual recognition apps were this easy, or there was an open-source recognizer library for this functionality:

http://www.looktel.com/recognizer

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

#90

Post by Dylan16807 »

simonster wrote: post #72
memonkey wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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... ).

20/250 vision is... really good. Able to use a full 80x24 terminal with ease. Able to drive as long as you're not too picky about legality or reading signs. Able to read facial expressions in a conversation. I'm very curious about the details of 'equivalent'.
Post reply on HN