
Be My Eyes Hits the 1M Volunteer Mark - walterbell
http://globalaccessibilitynews.com/2018/05/21/be-my-eyes-hits-the-1-million-volunteer-mark/
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bcks
I've been a volunteer for a couple of years now. It's so rare to get the ping
for volunteers (maybe once every few months?) and you really have to be _very_
quick to accept the call before another volunteer does, but when you're able
to connect and help it's such an rush of joy. The project such a simple,
elegant application of smartphones and real-time crowdsourcing.

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smkelly
There is also a paid service that does similar to this, except the assistance
is provided by trained agents. I have the service and have found it to be
invaluable in the few times I've actually needed to use it. I still have some
vision, so it actually makes it harder to decide to use the service.

The paid service is [http://aira.io](http://aira.io). I'm glad BME exists too
though, as there are a lot of blind people that currently can't afford Aira.
The unemployment rate for blind people is something like a staggering 70%.

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Jaruzel
These days I'm very cynical of the human race, but stories like this create a
pinprick of light in the darkness.

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renjimen
Cheer up! Take a break from the news, read Factfulness by Hans Rosling and
realise it's not all so bad.

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pontus
I recently signed up as a volunteer after listing to this podcast:
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/be-my-eyes-mobile-
micro-...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/be-my-eyes-mobile-micro-
volunteering-for-blind-hans/id1426194513?i=1000420498204&mt=2)

Interesting episode that touches on things like their monetizations strategy,
unexpected use cases etc. Definitely worth a listen.

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lucb1e
I recently heard of BME from a blind person. He doesn't need it often because
he's usually with someone, but he said it worked very well. This was a good
reminder as I forgot to sign up after he told me. I didn't know it was so
widely used!

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crypto-jeronimo
Seems to be 'HackerNews'-ed currently. Still available, in the meantime, via
the Wayback Machine:
[http://web.archive.org/web/20181021030134/globalaccessibilit...](http://web.archive.org/web/20181021030134/globalaccessibilitynews.com/2018/05/21/be-
my-eyes-hits-the-1-million-volunteer-mark/)

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leowoo91
Very inspiring. Why don't someone attempt utilizing all ML advances in
driving/OCR to make this work even when offline? This could pre-eliminate lot
of cases.

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bcks
It's not offline, but the Microsoft Seeing AI app for iOS uses ML to cover a
lot of basic use cases like recognizing text, products, currency, describing
scenes, etc: [https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/seeing-
ai](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/seeing-ai)

~~~
smkelly
Anirudh Koul, the Seeing AI founder, also recently left Microsoft to go work
at Aira.io: [https://aira.io/anirudh-koul-joins-aira-as-head-of-
artificia...](https://aira.io/anirudh-koul-joins-aira-as-head-of-artificial-
intelligence-and-research)

Aira is trying to integrate this kind of technology into smart glasses for the
blind.

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RobMurray
The idea behind the app is great, and I do use it occasionally. All of the
volunteers I have spoken to have been very helpful. The main problem is video
quality, and the fact that you can't just send the volunteer a clear photo to
look at. It must be extremely frustrating to read something on a shaky blurry
video call.

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air7
I'm a member since 2015 but the cynic in me says the service's success is due
to its low effort/feel-good ratio...

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jwbensley
BME is amazing - are there other apps/services I can register for like BME as
an able bodied person?

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raverbashing
Given the impact of it and the reaction of visually impaired people, it's a
great mark to reach

