New app lets you lend your eyes to a blind person

I love when I discover an app that truly has a purpose other than entertaining you for five minutes. Such is the case with the Be My Eyes app.

The goal of the Be My Eyes app is to assist blind people when they need a little extra assistance with a task. According to the Be My Eyes website, these tasks could be anything from knowing the expiry date on a carton of milk to navigating new surroundings.

Here’s how the app works. When a blind person needs assistance, he or she taps a button in the app to request assistance. I was curious how this was done but I found my answer in the FAQ section of their website. The FAQ stated that blind people usually enable the VoiceOver feature on their iPhone to help guide them through the interface.

The request for assistance is then sent out to the community of users using the app who can see and are willing to help the blind person with their task. Once the connection is made between the requester and the helper, live video is established and the blind person can then verbalize what they need help with. The helper will then guide the blind person or answer the question they are asking.

There is a built-in rating system to prevent people from abusing the system. I don’t know for sure but I would guess that this same rating system is used to prioritize better helpers when the app is searching for a helper in the Be My Eyes community.

The Be My Eyes app is only available for iOS (iPhone) right now but hopefully someday down the road it will be available for additional platforms.

For more details, watch the video below.