Open your eyes, and heart, via an app to help those who can’t see

Singh, 23, answered the video call and saw a middle-aged man who said he needed assistance picking out a particular black pair from among his shoes. They worked it out through the Be My Eyes app, hung up and went on with their respective days.

Created by visually impaired Danish furniture craftsman Hans Jorgen Wiberg in 2015, Be My Eyes connects visually impaired people with sighted volunteers through video calls, so that the latter can help the former with small everyday tasks such as reading labels on grocery items, matching or describing colours, and navigating new surroundings. The idea was to enable greater independence, since the visually impaired person would be reaching out to volunteers, rather than stopping strangers on the street or calling the same friends and relatives.

Six years on, the app has nearly 350,000 visually challenged users and over 5 million volunteers around the world, with assistance available in more than 180 languages. It doesn’t show one user where the other is, but pairs people based on time zone and preferred language.

Calls are typically spread out. Singh has received two more calls, for instance, both from other users, since that first one about the black shoes. Bengaluru-based software developer Saransh Agarwal has received a total of about 30 since 2019.

“I stumbled upon Be My Eyes while doing research on accessibility for an app that I was building, and downloaded it immediately,” he says. He received his first call the same day, from a user who needed assistance with a CAPTCHA code. “I read out the code to him, and he was so thankful. That just made my day,” Agarwal says.

Vineeta Tripathi, a 45-year-old homemaker from Mumbai, has been using the Be My Eyes since its Android release in 2017. “The volunteers give time in an altruistic way and that makes all the difference. I am a homemaker and I also love art and craft. After my chores are done, I usually spend my time crafting household items. The other day I was decorating a vase and I couldn’t distinguish between some beads. Without panicking I pulled out the app. A young voice at the other end helped me identify the right colours and everything was fixed within minutes,” she says.

It’s a revolution of sorts, adds Chennai-based Subramani Lakshmi, an author and storyteller. Lakshmi has been reaching out for assistance via the app for more than two years, “for a gamut of requirements, down to checking the vegetables to see if they are still fresh to checking out temperature of the refrigerator”.

“One of the life-changing things about it is that I no longer have to wait until a sighted person comes along,” he says. Recently, standing at Mysuru railway station, he reached out via Be My Eyes to figure out which coach he was supposed to sit in. “I feel more independent now,” he says. “It’s especially helpful to people who live alone.”