Words by Tess Becker
The definition of blindness can be pretty broad. There's a pure lack of sight that most people think of when they hear blindness, but there are also millions of people in the US that have visual impairments of different kinds.
According to the CDC, 93 million adults in the US are at risk of vision loss, and over 7 million people in the US experience a visual disability.
One company has made it their goal to help those people with the app, Be My Eyes.
In an oversaturated app market on smartphones, blind people are usually a neglected demographic, but something like Be My Eyes tries to help those people. The point of the app is to pair volunteers with blind or visually impaired people in need of help with small, everyday tasks. This can be something like reading the expiration date on a food product or the color of a shirt to match an outfit.
Be My Eyes users can request assistance in over 180 languages making the app the biggest online community for blind and low-vision people as well as one of the largest micro-volunteering platforms in the world.
Sine they launched in 2015 the app has attracted over 6 million volunteers to help seeing impaired people using the service, and like with many things these days they’re working on utilizing AI technology like ChatGPT to improve the app.
“It's my hope that by helping each other as an online community, Be My Eyes will make a big difference in the everyday lives of blind people all over the world,” Be My Eyes Founder, Hans Jørgen Wiberg, said.
