Allison interviews Hans Jørgen Wiberg, Founder of Be My Eyes, about their service which connects blind or low-vision users who want assistance with volunteers and companies worldwide through live video and AI.
To access the service, you use the Be My Eyes app on a smartphone to get free, instant visual descriptions anytime, day or night. You can connect with a volunteer, take a picture, and let Be My AI describe it or reach out to partners through the Service Directory for help with their products.
Volunteers partner with people who are blind or have low vision to provide real-time descriptions or assistance if and when needed. You can join the volunteer community and make a meaningful impact.
Businesses can enhance their accessible customer service with real-time video and AI support, resolve up to 90% of cases automatically, and cut resolution times and costs by 60%. They can also provide tools that make the workplace more accessible for employees who are blind or have low vision.
Learn more at https://www.bemyeyes.com/
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Transcript of Interview:
Allison: I’ve explained on my show several times how to use Be My AI to add automatic captions to your images so that when you share them on social media like Mastodon, they will automatically be included as alt text. I’ve taught about how to do it, and this is from a company called Be My Eyes. And I have the great joy of meeting Hans Wiberg, who is the founder of Be My Eyes. How are you doing today?
Hans Wiberg: I’m doing great, thank you.
Allison: So I’ve also been — we’ve got my friend Pat Dengler with us right here, and she’s got on her Meta Ray-Bans that are a great tool for the blind to use Be My Eyes as an accessibility path to helping them understand their environments. And I hope that’s what you’d like to talk about today.
Hans Wiberg: Absolutely.
Allison: Or did I tell the whole story?
Hans Wiberg: Pretty much. But it is — of course, you can basically do the same thing with your phone, but having both hands free makes a huge difference. When you are in the kitchen or you have something where you need both hands to adjust something, and the fact that you can just say to the glasses, “Hey, Meta, Be My Eyes,” and then we call a volunteer and you get a pair of eyes right in your face, basically. That’s just totally amazing. And the real deal is that the Meta glasses, they look cool also, but the most cool thing is the price, because there are other glasses out there, but they are way more expensive. And financial accessibility is also accessibility. It doesn’t matter if you have the best product if people cannot afford to use it. So we are so happy that we have been able to partner with Meta about bringing Be My Eyes to their glasses. I know that $300 is also a lot of money, but at least it is way more accessible to a way bigger group of people.
Allison: Most glasses cost $300 if you’re not clever about where you buy them. I want to back us up a little bit, because I sort of jumped the gun with everything I already know. So Be My Eyes is a volunteer thing, where as a sighted person, you can volunteer to help somebody who, say, wants to know where their cufflinks are in the room. And you can be called to say, “Hey, can you help me find my cufflinks?” The person holds up their phone and you answer the question. But like you say, this is now a partnership with Meta that puts them actually in the glasses, so you’re always looking around and able to do that.
Hans Wiberg: Exactly. And for some reason, it is also easier to focus the right direction with your glasses than using your phone, because you kind of, in a more natural way, you point your head the right direction.
Allison: Well, and the volunteer could say, “Hey, turn your head a little bit to the left.”
Hans Wiberg: Exactly, yeah.
Allison: Now, how quickly does that work? So I’m at the airport and I’m trying to find a bathroom. My nightmare is trying to find a bathroom. So I’m looking for the ladies’ room. Do I tap the glasses or something to ask Be My Eyes to jump in and help me?
Hans Wiberg: No, you put on the glasses and then you simply say, “Hey, Meta.” That kind of triggers the glasses. And then you say, “Be My Eyes,” and then we start calling a volunteer. So it’s super, super simple. You can also, at least in the US and Canada and Australia, UK and Ireland, you can also use the built-in AI in the glasses. That has nothing to do with Be My Eyes, but you can simply ask the glasses, “Hey, Meta, look and describe.” And then the Meta glasses will take a picture and describe what’s in front of you. So that’s also a super convenient way to get a fast answer on something. You can do the same thing on your phone, where you will use the Be My AI and get a more detailed description. And on the glasses, you can also say, “Hey, Meta, take a picture.” And then it simply takes a picture and that will end up on your phone. So it’s super convenient and also fun to play around with.
Allison: I think you make a good point about the coolness of the glasses, too. Going with Ray-Ban was genius. That was just a genius move, I think. I do have one question. You said with the Meta AI, you ask it to describe my surroundings or whatever, and it takes a picture. What happens when you say, “Be My Eyes?” Does that then turn on the camera and it’s a live stream or something?
Hans Wiberg: Yeah. When you say, “Be My Eyes,” we call a volunteer and we have a live video connection from the glasses to the volunteer. So the volunteer will look through that little camera in the glasses and you will hear the voice of the volunteer in the speaker of the glasses.
Allison: How quickly does a volunteer typically answer? Yeah. I really got to go to the bathroom. I really got to get help right now.
Hans Wiberg: Please don’t use them while you are in the toilet. But to locate the door and all that, that’s perfectly fine. Just be aware of stop in time, so to speak.
Allison: Fine hands. Okay.
Hans Wiberg: Yeah. So, I mean, if you are in the kitchen cooking something and you have something on your fingers, and then it can be so convenient that you don’t have to wash your fingers and pull the phone out and hold it and all that. You can just say, “Hey, Meta Be My Eyes,” and then you are on with whatever you’re doing.
Allison: How quickly does somebody typically answer?
Hans Wiberg: It will be within 10 to 20 seconds.
Allison: Really? Oh, man, I was thinking it was a lot longer than that. And this is all free, right?
Hans Wiberg: It is. Yeah. Yeah. We decided from… Be My Eyes is 10 years old, and we decided from day one that Be My Eyes should always be a free service. And the reason is that most of the blind people in this world, they live in the so-called global south. And maybe they have a smartphone, but a lot of people in the global south, they cannot pay $10 a month or something. And so we decided that if possible, Be My Eyes should be a free service. Our business model, if I may, is that we have partnerships with companies like Google and Microsoft and Spotify and LinkedIn. So you can use the Be My Eyes app to get support with your Spotify account or your Microsoft products. And the good thing about that… There’s a number of good things about it. First of all, Microsoft and the other companies, they pay Be My Eyes a monthly subscription to be on our platform.
Allison: Oh, okay.
Hans Wiberg: Sometimes we laugh about that the smallest company in the world, Be My Eyes, has some of the biggest companies as our customers. But we can provide something that they cannot provide, because Be My Eyes app is made for blind people. Because they… I mean, Microsoft, they could build whatever app they wanted. But you don’t want a Microsoft app to call Microsoft and a Google app to call Google. That’s never going to work. But when we can add all those companies into an app that you are using anyway, and you are familiar with, then it is way easier for those companies to actually serve their blind customers in a meaningful way. And also, for instance, with Microsoft, they have maybe a thousand agents answering calls from their customers. And most of those agents, they don’t know about what a screen reader is and all that. But because they know it’s a call from Be My Eyes, then we can route the calls to, say, 20 specific agents who get all the calls.
Allison: That’s great.
Hans Wiberg: Yeah. So those agents, they actually know what a screen reader is and why it doesn’t work and what to do when it doesn’t work and all that. And they know the person is blind, so they can explain the things in the right way.
Allison: I can’t imagine how frustrating it must be to try to start the call when you know this person’s never going to be able to answer your call and try to get routed. So now within the Be My Eyes app, I think what you’re talking about is there’s a separate section where you can call different companies. Is that correct?
Hans Wiberg: Yeah. It’s called service directory.
Allison: Yeah. So it’s actually the secret way to get directly to better help. But I promise I won’t abuse that. And also, I mean, just as I’m blind myself, as a blind or low vision people, finding a phone number to a company, I mean, some of the companies, I will not say any name, but some of the companies, they really try to hide their phone number.
Allison: I will call one out. Frontier. Sorry. I spent hours yesterday just trying to get through to a human of the right department. So yeah, it can be nearly impossible.
Hans Wiberg: So you’ve got a directory within the app. And we have added some phone numbers from companies who might not be super happy about that we actually provide the numbers to their customers. But we will do it anyway, because our mission is to help blind and low vision people get access to the support they need. And you can call our volunteers. But if you need some expert assistance with a super specific thing, then the company should grow up and provide the service.
Allison: I like that. So if people want to get, if they’re blind or they are sighted, they can go to BeMyEyes.com. And then you can download the app for your phone. And then when you go in, it basically says, do you need help or do you want to give help? And then it directs you to the right version.
Hans Wiberg: That’s also something I’m really proud about that. It doesn’t really mean that much. But it is the same app you download, whether you are blind or sighted. And then you choose what role you have. So yeah, that’s how you do it. And you can, of course, on Android and on iOS.
Allison: Very good. Well, thank you very much for your time. This was fantastic. I’ve always wanted to talk to somebody from Be My Eyes. So getting to talk to the founder, I thought it was a great honor. Thank you so much.