I just downloaded it, and I'm stuck at the "please enable the following to fully join the Be My Eyes network". I approved all the permissions. Nothing's happening.
iOS 8.something on an iPhone5.
Be My Eyes – Lend your eyes to the blind
131–140 of 165 posts
Re: Be My Eyes – Lend your eyes to the blind
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
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'.
Wow, yeah. I'm 20/400ish without my contacts in (nearsighted, -3.75/-4.0, plus some mild astigmatism), and while I couldn't drive a vehicle like that (or rather, wouldn't - I could probably stay in the lane okay during the day, but wouldn't be able to read any signs, and after dark the whole experience would be terrifying), I can certainly interact fine with others, read facial expressions as long as a person isn't o…
With nearsightedness, you can have nearly normal vision 1 foot away even if you have much worse vision 20 feet away. With this system I suspect you can see things better when they're closer just because they encompass more of the visual field, but you probably can't see something 1 foot away nearly as well as a myopic person with 20/250 vision.
On the other hand, you might still be able to read. The vOICe people published a paper (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896627312...) that shows that regions of the brain that are activated by letters/words in normal individuals and by Braille reading in the blind are activated by vOICe after training.
Re: Be My Eyes – Lend your eyes to the blind
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 interacti…
There are various ways to segment customers to extract money from those who can afford it, while offering low-cost or free services to those who cannot. We need companies like this to have high cash flow, so they can hire top developers and create jobs where an engineer's daily work goes directly to improve human quality of life.
I'd like it if this would force you to pay based on how long something was going to take. I want to install freenas in a virtual machine so I can test the web interface accessibility before spending the money on a server to run it. I'd gladly pay $10 or $15 to have someone walk me through the install by me pointing my phone at my laptop screen if that were possible but don't want to ask someone who's expecting to spend 30 seconds reading a label spend 30 minutes walking me through an OS install instead.
Re: Be My Eyes – Lend your eyes to the blind
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
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'.
It's limited to 1 fps though. However I'm very impressed this is possible. I had a similar idea recently, and had no idea it had already been done or worked so well.
Re: Be My Eyes – Lend your eyes to the blind
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> 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.
Really ? Are you going to ask every developer as well to try to use a website by binding their arms as well, to see how mutilated people feel about the navigation ?
There are good cases for adapting designs to make it usable to most people, and there are good cases as well where the people with disabilities need to have tools to access what's not made for them in the first place.
Re: Be My Eyes – Lend your eyes to the blind
#136Nice 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…
TIL blind people use smileys.
Re: Be My Eyes – Lend your eyes to the blind
#137Now that's one of those ideas that are so ingenious that it's actually giving me chills.
Also, it's always great when IT improves people health condition.
Re: Be My Eyes – Lend your eyes to the blind
#138I 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.
I have the same fears. Downloaded the app, and once I realized that I needed to make an account, in addition to my fear, I balked out. Or maybe I'm just lazy..
Re: Be My Eyes – Lend your eyes to the blind
#139Earlier 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…
There are scanners that a blind person can keep in their pocket or on a keychain that will scan currency and speak the denomination.
Re: Be My Eyes – Lend your eyes to the blind
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 interacti…
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