My "Be My Eyes" Experience
Be My Eyes is a really great app. It's available for both Android and IOS. It's for blind or partially sighted users and with it you can call a sighted volunteer with just a press of a button to get help with simple tasks such as reading an expiration date or picking out a flavour of something.
Before I got it, I was thinking that this was creepy because you're asking a stranger who you do not know to help you do a certain task. I had so many worries about this app, like what if they can see my face? Will they know who this is? But putting these worries aside helped me find the courage to get the app and use it.
I got the app about a month ago. I wanted to see how well it worked. The first task I tried on it was to ask the sighted volunteer about the expiration date of a yogurt container. At this point, I feel as though my camera skills are not the best, but the call with the volunteer went very well. The good thing with these video calls is the sighted volunteer only has access to the camera on the back of your phone, which I discovered when I started using the app. So unless you use the back camera to film yourself, they will not see your face. They also don't know who you are. All they know is that someone needs help.
The volunteer was also able to take a snapshot of the expiration date so I wouldn't have to keep holding the camera steady. The snapshot is not stored on their device when they hit the snapshot button in the call. The volunteer was also able to give me directions in how to point my camera: move your camera up, to the left, down, right etc. If the room is still too dark, the volunteer also has access to a flashlight that they can turn on to see things better. After the call, you and the volunteer anonymously rate how the call went. I selected good because I felt as though it was a great first experience.
I continue to use Be My Eyes more and more, asking the volunteers for help with new and different tasks each time.In my opinion, Be My Eyes is different than any OCR app. It's not using AI (artificial intelligence) and sometimes, asking someone for help is better than AI for that these sorts of tasks. The sighted volunteer is able to adapt flexibly to the task whereas using AI may not be as good at this.
I would also recommend this app for people who are learning how to use their camera because of the in-call features that the volunteers have access to. Be my Eyes has changed my life: it has changed my independence and makes me feel more like a sighted person. If my eyes don't work, at least, the eyes of a volunteer will. There are over 6-million volunteers on this app, so if you are partially sighted or blind, it's worth a try to use it. You never know what your experience may be and you will never know if you like it, unless you try.
If you are interested in learning more about Be My Eyes, you can visit the links below:
About Be My Eyes | Download Be My Eyes