Be My Eyes - Lend your eyes to the blind

@inthecompanyof Better yet - it came from Startup Weekend (Aarhus) :)

@staringispolite An interesting position - one that I might not be entirely equipped to debate. Hans Jørgen Wiberg, the founder of Be My Eyes, is a leading figure in the danish blind society (and is visually impaired himself). He was asked about this on TV and his response was that an app like this isn't a substitute for real human contact. He said "I still expect blind people to ask their neighbor for help from time to time". His angle was more that instead of asking the same group of people repeatedly everyday, you could branch out and get a more diverse pool of help. This would make you more likely to 'borrow' a set of eyes in situations you might not have before, enabling you to do things that necessarily doesn't involve asking your spouse, friends or family about. Anecdotally I've seen this first hand and to me it makes sense. I don't think something like this will hurt the independence of blind people or make them too reliant. I think it'll empower them to do more without taxing existing relationships.

@flarup I think the two approaches can co-exist actually, I had just heard about the above "movement" so I was very curious to get your thoughts. They focus more on independence from *anyone* not just friend groups. They learn to sense the environment with canes, listening (some even echolocation!) passing vision tests with similar fidelity to a sighted person's peripheral vision. So their position (which I may be butchering here) was that a lot of help actually hinders. But I thought the example of "does this picture of me look good" was fantastic. The milk was a bit silly (if it's bad, it'll smell bad) but no amount of this research purports to let blind people read screens. So there will always be specific instances where this tech can fit. I just heard a radio show on this, so the timing is serendipitous. I think you may enjoy it (and I'd love to know what you think, working in the space) http://www.thisamericanlife.org/...