
New app to help blind people see through your eyes - giacomop
https://www.bespecular.com/
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jeffmould
As someone with a blind relative I always am interested in new technology that
can help. So of course this sparked my interest. But there is a glaring
problem in that it requires the "VIP" (using their acronym) to take a photo of
the object with their phone. This can be extremely challenging for an
individual who is completely blind. I know first hand because I have received
some interesting photo messages from my relative. For example, often times the
photo will be well out of focus, or the front camera was used instead, or the
photo is of something completely random and not what they intended. I would be
curious how the app overcomes this challenge.

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giacomop
Hello Jeff, I'm Giacomo, one of the co-founders! Sometimes it happens that our
VIPs take a picture with the phone too close to the object and therefore the
picture comes out blurry, but that is a small percentage of the cases. But we
do have a solution on which we are working on (will be released in one of the
future updates). It is a tool that guides the VIP when taking the picture by
telling which side to move and if the object is too close. This is
accomplished using some machine vision algorithms (in particular the region
proposals ones) ...You'll see how it works when it comes out!

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jeffmould
Thanks for the reply. That's great and sounds interesting. I will definitely
follow your progress. Too early for me to suggest to my relative now, but with
those added changes it would definitely be something I would try. Thanks again
and good luck.

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giacomop
If you want, you can sign up as a sighted to help our VIPs ;) the link is
bespecular.com/signup and then you download the app from the stores or at
bespecular.com/download.

Have a nice day

