7 ms·

Nice idea, but I think it would be better if it were commercial, with the blind user paying, the sighted helper getting paid, and the app developers getting a c

Nice idea, but I think it would be better if it were commercial, with the blind user paying, the sighted helper getting paid, and the app developers getting a cut. The payment could be by the minute. I think the general public will be more inclined to treat blind people as equals if we demolish the notion that blind people require charity. Addendum: Lest anyone think I'm talking out of my ass, here's a blog post from a blind programmer who previously had the idea of doing something like this as a business. Unfortunately, it looks like he abandoned that project, since the home page now redirects to something else. https://thewordnerd.info/2014/04/01/perceptron-the-first-real-time-marketplace-for-independent-living-help/ https://thewordnerd.info/2014/04/01/perceptron-the-first-rea...

PostOnce 12y ago
Really? Equals? Don't require charity? They CAN'T SEE. Even if they can somehow manage to do "everything" a normal person can do, they can't do it with the same speed. Every blind person is 100% totally self-sufficient and able to hold down a steady job that pays well enough to take care of all their needs? Job hunting is hard enough when you can see! Imagine, a world where the government and employers didn't provide any extra help for the blind, and the blind didn't have families to lean on. What the hell are you actually talking about? "If we took wheelchairs away from crippled people, maybe the general public will be more inclined to treat them as equals and demolish the notion that cripples require the assistance of wheelchairs"
boomlinde 12y ago
The blind people are already outnumbered by the sighted, pretty much 1:10. Turns out blind people don't use phones with touch screens.
nolk100 12y ago
I'd feel pretty cheeky helping a blind person if I was doing it just to get paid for it. Similarly, I wouldn't help an old lady cross the street then ask for a pound.
- hrjet 12y ago
  What if there was a setting: "I only provide service for free" / "I accept payments for my service" in your profile? Such a setting could even be on a per-case basis. Imagine if you helped someone for a good part of a day, and they were ready to return the favor in cash, and you were given the choice to accept or decline it.
- Gracana 12y ago
  I think at that point you wouldn't be "crowdsourcing" your labor anymore. It'd be like a telecommunications relay service[1], where the operators are properly trained employees. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_relay_service http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_relay_servic...
- khebbie 12y ago
  Yep it's called micro volunteering :-)
TeMPOraL 12y ago
Upvoted, though I don't like that idea. People tend to treat differently things they do for money and things they do for non-monetary rewards. In this particular case, I'm not sure which version would be better for the blind, but I think I'd prefer to help for free. I'm interested in further discussion. Input from actual blind people would be really helpful here.
- mwcampbell 12y ago
  Well, for what it's worth, I'm legally blind (I have enough sight to read a computer screen up close, but not enough to drive). And I have totally blind friends who like the idea of a paid service like this. (I personally know the guy whose blog post I referenced in the addendum to my first post.)
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    Thanks for your input. As I wrote, I'm mainly worried about the tendency for pro-bono systems to get corrupted when you introduce money into them. BTW. How big payments you had in mind?
  - sly010 12y ago
    If blind are willing to pay and volunteers are willing to help for free, then all the money can be spent on innovation. Sound like a perfect business to me, as long as the volunteer return rate is good.
saalaa 12y ago
Well, AFB would like to have a conversation with you. http://www.afb.org/info/living-with-vision-loss/for-job-seekers/employment-statistics/125 http://www.afb.org/info/living-with-vision-loss/for-job-seek... I'm all for empowering people but I doubt that given the current state of things, especially blind and visually impaired employment rate, this would be successful if it were for-profit. If successful as a non-profit this projects can - raise awareness - break isolation - practically improve lives - push society forward (helping solve employment?) - make everybody's life much better I really mean it regarding "empowerment". I've worked with NGOs on remote locations and I'm all too aware of their derives but in this case I think your point makes no sense.
- khebbie 12y ago
  Please do contact us at info@bemyeyes.org
frandroid 12y ago
My first thought was the point that saalaa is making in a sibling comment, but I'm also thinking there should be a way for users to either go for a volunteer, or have mechanical turk options when you REALLY need to see something and you would pay for it.
yodon 12y ago
Blindness is unfortunately a nearly crushing disability economically. 74% of the blind are unemployed [1] (there is another figure you will occasionally also see of 13% unemployment for the blind, that's a US Government statistic that excludes anyone who is not considered in the list of potentially employed people). Equally important for HN-type readers to know is that Braille literacy is highly correlated with employment among the blind, and rates of Braille literacy are falling rapidly in the US, from a peak of around 50% in the 1950's to more like 12% today [1]. Smart phone apps are great and important but from what I've read they don't seem to be having the impact on blind employment that Braille has had. Hopefully someone here will know of a survey reporting measurable economic gains for the new generation of Braille-illiterate technologically assisted blind, thus far what I've heard anecdotally on that front has not been encouraging. [1] http://www.nbp.org/ic/nbp/braille/needforbraille.html http://www.nbp.org/ic/nbp/braille/needforbraille.html
- detaro 12y ago
  Wow, I would not have expected those low Braille literacy figures. For the UK, numbers seem to be similar. I couldn't find any for other European countries, but at least here in Germany Braille markings are very common, so I'd always thought that most blind can use them.
  - unholiness 12y ago
    The 12% figure refers to legally blind children, the majority (90%) of whom are partially sighted. For someone who is able to read text at close distances with significant optical assistance, it is far more beneficial for them to learn a written language than to learn braille characters. Until recently, many legally blind US children (and their parents) had the choice to either learn braille or written English. Those who learned braille ended up severely disadvantaged because of the utter lack of braille information produced in our society, and the difficulty of using any screen-based technology.
  - CJefferson 12y ago
    I think computers killed off Braille, particularly among the young. Both Windows (with the right software) and Mac OS X (straight out of the box) are surprisingly (it suprised me!) usable by blind people.
lbr 12y ago
I like the idea of helping people for free (as do many people in the thread). But I wonder quality of assistance would be better if people were getting paid. And I wonder if the app would reach more people if it were for profit.
JshWright 12y ago
I'd suggest (almost) exactly the opposite, actually... Charge $5/mo to be a 'helper' and keep it free for blind users. I suspect there are enough folks out there who would be happy to pay $5 for the opportunity to help others (maybe I'm too much of an optimist though... who knows...) That way you cover costs, and filter out a lot of potential trolls.
- aswerty 12y ago
  I think this is a good idea. The subscription could potentially be done similarly to Humble Bundle where a decent percentage could be ring fenced for charitable/non-profit organisations. In this case you'd expect it to go to organisations helping the bodily impaired.
- cgag 12y ago
  Paying someone to be a middleman on my volunteer charity work feels pretty gross.
  - walterbell 12y ago
    If they are providing a valuable service, this will lead to competition and more vendors who want to help you provide your charity more easily/efficiently/augmented/whatever. If they are not providing a valuable service, they will go out of business.
  - JshWright 12y ago
    Why? They are enabling you to have opportunities to help people that you would not otherwise have. I would consider that a service worth paying for (and I assume I'm not alone...)
    - ianferrel 12y ago
      It feels like being taken advantage of. It's taking the worst part of crowdsourcing, which is that the majority of the gains are concentrated in a few people while many people contribute to success, but receive a pittance, and making it even worse. I'm not convinced that the raw economic incentives work out, either. I have tons of opportunities to help people. Supply of people who need help greatly exceeds my ability to provide it. I can't imagine paying for the privilege.
kszx 12y ago
For these kinds of services, the introduction of a payment can change supply and demand in very unexpected ways. Example: There once was an experiment with blood donations, where a payment for the blood donation actually decreased the number of people who were willing to donate. Apparently, receiving a payment for an activity that seems charitable makes some people feel bad. A similar effect might happen if Blind My Eyes introduced payments. (While this particular effect would reduce supply, this does not necessarily imply that the introduction of a payment would lead to a negative change in supply. It's just one factor.)
- ndarilek 12y ago
  As a blind person, I find the idea that my borrowing someone's eyes is viewed as a charitable thing somewhat bothersome, particularly if I'm doing it to use my time more efficiently. Put another way, sure I can wait 6 hours or so until a sightling happens to be around so I can read a letter, but how is me paying a few bucks for someone's time to do it now any different than you paying for Uber, Lyft, etc. instead of taking a bus? Further, while I support this initiative, I have to wonder how sustainable it will be in the long run. I used to occasionally use Solona, a CAPTCHA-solving service that relied on volunteers. Unfortunately I can't seem to find it anymore (only searched briefly) and I recall many instances where volunteers weren't available. A marketplace that exchanges micropayments for these types of services, usable on a variety of platforms and with easy notifications for assistants, is something I've personally wanted for a very long time. Disclosure: I'm working on such a thing, hoping to launch in 2-3 months.
  - TuringTest 12y ago
    It's not more charitable than contributing content to Wikipedia. By gamifying the service or otherwise rewarding those who lend their eyes in some non-monetary way, participating in the app is a form of entertainment that brings its own reward.
    - dsrguru 12y ago
      Contributions to Wikipedia are not time-sensitive, and the ability to load a Wikipedia article is not dependent on the availability of volunteering Wikipedia gnomes. Here, the availability of seeing volunteers at any given time is the limiting reagent, and the free market is one proposed solution. The Uber/Lyft/taxi analogy is that the availability of friends with cars and free time at any given time or place is the limiting reagent for getting free rides. The existence of paid services allows us to increase that availability by orders of magnitude, and hopefully the same would apply here.
ndarilek 12y ago
Actually, I haven't abandoned it--literally working on it this very minute, in fact. :) The problem is that multi-platform video interchange is a hard problem. Very hard. SIP only gets you so far even with web RTC, then you hit issues where server X doesn't like delegating authentication to anything else, Y does but requires super-indepth knowledge of the protocol, and Z may or may not but it's got so many modules it's hard to tell. Then there's the issue of needing some degree of call control so connections can be terminated for using too much time, which the hosted SIP services I looked at don't seem to allow. And, unfortunately, the hardest problem of the launch list is the one I need to get right, meaning I've spent months looking for a good, low-cost, cross-platform (desktop, Android and IOS) video exchange solution and have only recently found something that may work. It's possible that I've just used bad Google keywords or something, but none of the legacy SIP servers seem to like being plugged into a web app as opposed to managing everything themselves. So, yeah, definitely not abandoned, I've just spent way more time than I liked finding a possibly good media server, plus continuing to earn money so I can keep the lights on and pay the rent. :) Hoping for a launch in the next couple months, assuming my current path pays off. BTW, how the hell do you accessibly (I.e. via the keyboard) click the button to submit comments here? :P I have to poke around on my touchscreen until I find it, then double-tap. Surely there's a better way?
- ninguem2 12y ago
  TIL blind people use smileys.
- kimburgess 12y ago
  Ah yes, cross platform video. The bane of anyone who has ever worked with videoconferencing systems. If you're still working on it (ditto for the authors of Be My Eyes) it may be worth getting in touch with someone along the lines of Pexip[1] to see if they're interested in assisting with infrastructure and handling of media so that it's possible to focus on wrapping that is some beautiful UX for this use case. [1] http://pexip.com/ http://pexip.com/
  - mcguire 12y ago
    For completeness sake, I'd like to note that the OP doesn't seem to be cross-platform.
Tloewald 12y ago
It would be interesting to use something like bitcoin for social capital -- literally a favor bank.
kall 12y ago
Taptapsee[1] is a similar app that is commercial. Its a bit more limited / streamlined, in that it only sends one picture and one textual description instead of doing a video chat, but it does work really well. I agree that making it a commercial service can be a positive thing, because it makes a blind user not feel any guilt over using the service excessively. On the other the financial situations of people with disabilities are quite different in different countries, so my perspective here is limited. [1] http://www.taptapseeapp.com http://www.taptapseeapp.com
SrslyJosh 12y ago
#shithnsays
ilyaeck 12y ago
Would the creator(s) of Be My Eyes pitch in here and share their view of non-profit vs. for-profit? For instance, our company, Robin Labs, develops voice-driven solutions, technology that should be almost perfect for the visually impaired. We are willing to design a dedicated product that is just the right voice assistant for the blind if we can simply break even. We want to help, but cannot self-fund it entirely.
thekevan 12y ago
"Nice idea, but I think it would be better if it were commercial, with the blind user paying, the sighted helper getting paid, and the app developers getting a cut. The payment could be by the minute." What makes you think your opinion on this matters? That sounds inflammatory but it's a bit pompous to look at an idea and say, "nice, but you should make people pay for it."

PostOnce 12y ago

Really? Equals? Don't require charity? They CAN'T SEE. Even if they can somehow manage to do "everything" a normal person can do, they can't do it with the same speed. Every blind person is 100% totally self-sufficient and able to hold down a steady job that pays well enough to take care of all their needs? Job hunting is hard enough when you can see! Imagine, a world where the government and employers didn't provide any extra help for the blind, and the blind didn't have families to lean on. What the hell are you actually talking about? "If we took wheelchairs away from crippled people, maybe the general public will be more inclined to treat them as equals and demolish the notion that cripples require the assistance of wheelchairs"

boomlinde 12y ago

The blind people are already outnumbered by the sighted, pretty much 1:10. Turns out blind people don't use phones with touch screens.

nolk100 12y ago

I'd feel pretty cheeky helping a blind person if I was doing it just to get paid for it. Similarly, I wouldn't help an old lady cross the street then ask for a pound.

hrjet 12y ago
What if there was a setting: "I only provide service for free" / "I accept payments for my service" in your profile? Such a setting could even be on a per-case basis. Imagine if you helped someone for a good part of a day, and they were ready to return the favor in cash, and you were given the choice to accept or decline it.
Gracana 12y ago
I think at that point you wouldn't be "crowdsourcing" your labor anymore. It'd be like a telecommunications relay service[1], where the operators are properly trained employees. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_relay_service http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_relay_servic...
khebbie 12y ago
Yep it's called micro volunteering :-)

TeMPOraL 12y ago

Upvoted, though I don't like that idea. People tend to treat differently things they do for money and things they do for non-monetary rewards. In this particular case, I'm not sure which version would be better for the blind, but I think I'd prefer to help for free. I'm interested in further discussion. Input from actual blind people would be really helpful here.

mwcampbell 12y ago
Well, for what it's worth, I'm legally blind (I have enough sight to read a computer screen up close, but not enough to drive). And I have totally blind friends who like the idea of a paid service like this. (I personally know the guy whose blog post I referenced in the addendum to my first post.)
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  Thanks for your input. As I wrote, I'm mainly worried about the tendency for pro-bono systems to get corrupted when you introduce money into them. BTW. How big payments you had in mind?
- sly010 12y ago
  If blind are willing to pay and volunteers are willing to help for free, then all the money can be spent on innovation. Sound like a perfect business to me, as long as the volunteer return rate is good.

saalaa 12y ago

Well, AFB would like to have a conversation with you. http://www.afb.org/info/living-with-vision-loss/for-job-seekers/employment-statistics/125 http://www.afb.org/info/living-with-vision-loss/for-job-seek... I'm all for empowering people but I doubt that given the current state of things, especially blind and visually impaired employment rate, this would be successful if it were for-profit. If successful as a non-profit this projects can - raise awareness - break isolation - practically improve lives - push society forward (helping solve employment?) - make everybody's life much better I really mean it regarding "empowerment". I've worked with NGOs on remote locations and I'm all too aware of their derives but in this case I think your point makes no sense.

khebbie 12y ago
Please do contact us at info@bemyeyes.org

frandroid 12y ago

My first thought was the point that saalaa is making in a sibling comment, but I'm also thinking there should be a way for users to either go for a volunteer, or have mechanical turk options when you REALLY need to see something and you would pay for it.

yodon 12y ago

Blindness is unfortunately a nearly crushing disability economically. 74% of the blind are unemployed [1] (there is another figure you will occasionally also see of 13% unemployment for the blind, that's a US Government statistic that excludes anyone who is not considered in the list of potentially employed people). Equally important for HN-type readers to know is that Braille literacy is highly correlated with employment among the blind, and rates of Braille literacy are falling rapidly in the US, from a peak of around 50% in the 1950's to more like 12% today [1]. Smart phone apps are great and important but from what I've read they don't seem to be having the impact on blind employment that Braille has had. Hopefully someone here will know of a survey reporting measurable economic gains for the new generation of Braille-illiterate technologically assisted blind, thus far what I've heard anecdotally on that front has not been encouraging. [1] http://www.nbp.org/ic/nbp/braille/needforbraille.html http://www.nbp.org/ic/nbp/braille/needforbraille.html

detaro 12y ago
Wow, I would not have expected those low Braille literacy figures. For the UK, numbers seem to be similar. I couldn't find any for other European countries, but at least here in Germany Braille markings are very common, so I'd always thought that most blind can use them.
- unholiness 12y ago
  The 12% figure refers to legally blind children, the majority (90%) of whom are partially sighted. For someone who is able to read text at close distances with significant optical assistance, it is far more beneficial for them to learn a written language than to learn braille characters. Until recently, many legally blind US children (and their parents) had the choice to either learn braille or written English. Those who learned braille ended up severely disadvantaged because of the utter lack of braille information produced in our society, and the difficulty of using any screen-based technology.
- CJefferson 12y ago
  I think computers killed off Braille, particularly among the young. Both Windows (with the right software) and Mac OS X (straight out of the box) are surprisingly (it suprised me!) usable by blind people.

lbr 12y ago

I like the idea of helping people for free (as do many people in the thread). But I wonder quality of assistance would be better if people were getting paid. And I wonder if the app would reach more people if it were for profit.

JshWright 12y ago

I'd suggest (almost) exactly the opposite, actually... Charge $5/mo to be a 'helper' and keep it free for blind users. I suspect there are enough folks out there who would be happy to pay $5 for the opportunity to help others (maybe I'm too much of an optimist though... who knows...) That way you cover costs, and filter out a lot of potential trolls.

aswerty 12y ago
I think this is a good idea. The subscription could potentially be done similarly to Humble Bundle where a decent percentage could be ring fenced for charitable/non-profit organisations. In this case you'd expect it to go to organisations helping the bodily impaired.
cgag 12y ago
Paying someone to be a middleman on my volunteer charity work feels pretty gross.
- walterbell 12y ago
  If they are providing a valuable service, this will lead to competition and more vendors who want to help you provide your charity more easily/efficiently/augmented/whatever. If they are not providing a valuable service, they will go out of business.
- JshWright 12y ago
  Why? They are enabling you to have opportunities to help people that you would not otherwise have. I would consider that a service worth paying for (and I assume I'm not alone...)
  - ianferrel 12y ago
    It feels like being taken advantage of. It's taking the worst part of crowdsourcing, which is that the majority of the gains are concentrated in a few people while many people contribute to success, but receive a pittance, and making it even worse. I'm not convinced that the raw economic incentives work out, either. I have tons of opportunities to help people. Supply of people who need help greatly exceeds my ability to provide it. I can't imagine paying for the privilege.

kszx 12y ago

For these kinds of services, the introduction of a payment can change supply and demand in very unexpected ways. Example: There once was an experiment with blood donations, where a payment for the blood donation actually decreased the number of people who were willing to donate. Apparently, receiving a payment for an activity that seems charitable makes some people feel bad. A similar effect might happen if Blind My Eyes introduced payments. (While this particular effect would reduce supply, this does not necessarily imply that the introduction of a payment would lead to a negative change in supply. It's just one factor.)

ndarilek 12y ago
As a blind person, I find the idea that my borrowing someone's eyes is viewed as a charitable thing somewhat bothersome, particularly if I'm doing it to use my time more efficiently. Put another way, sure I can wait 6 hours or so until a sightling happens to be around so I can read a letter, but how is me paying a few bucks for someone's time to do it now any different than you paying for Uber, Lyft, etc. instead of taking a bus? Further, while I support this initiative, I have to wonder how sustainable it will be in the long run. I used to occasionally use Solona, a CAPTCHA-solving service that relied on volunteers. Unfortunately I can't seem to find it anymore (only searched briefly) and I recall many instances where volunteers weren't available. A marketplace that exchanges micropayments for these types of services, usable on a variety of platforms and with easy notifications for assistants, is something I've personally wanted for a very long time. Disclosure: I'm working on such a thing, hoping to launch in 2-3 months.
- TuringTest 12y ago
  It's not more charitable than contributing content to Wikipedia. By gamifying the service or otherwise rewarding those who lend their eyes in some non-monetary way, participating in the app is a form of entertainment that brings its own reward.
  - dsrguru 12y ago
    Contributions to Wikipedia are not time-sensitive, and the ability to load a Wikipedia article is not dependent on the availability of volunteering Wikipedia gnomes. Here, the availability of seeing volunteers at any given time is the limiting reagent, and the free market is one proposed solution. The Uber/Lyft/taxi analogy is that the availability of friends with cars and free time at any given time or place is the limiting reagent for getting free rides. The existence of paid services allows us to increase that availability by orders of magnitude, and hopefully the same would apply here.

ndarilek 12y ago

Actually, I haven't abandoned it--literally working on it this very minute, in fact. :) The problem is that multi-platform video interchange is a hard problem. Very hard. SIP only gets you so far even with web RTC, then you hit issues where server X doesn't like delegating authentication to anything else, Y does but requires super-indepth knowledge of the protocol, and Z may or may not but it's got so many modules it's hard to tell. Then there's the issue of needing some degree of call control so connections can be terminated for using too much time, which the hosted SIP services I looked at don't seem to allow. And, unfortunately, the hardest problem of the launch list is the one I need to get right, meaning I've spent months looking for a good, low-cost, cross-platform (desktop, Android and IOS) video exchange solution and have only recently found something that may work. It's possible that I've just used bad Google keywords or something, but none of the legacy SIP servers seem to like being plugged into a web app as opposed to managing everything themselves. So, yeah, definitely not abandoned, I've just spent way more time than I liked finding a possibly good media server, plus continuing to earn money so I can keep the lights on and pay the rent. :) Hoping for a launch in the next couple months, assuming my current path pays off. BTW, how the hell do you accessibly (I.e. via the keyboard) click the button to submit comments here? :P I have to poke around on my touchscreen until I find it, then double-tap. Surely there's a better way?

ninguem2 12y ago
TIL blind people use smileys.
kimburgess 12y ago
Ah yes, cross platform video. The bane of anyone who has ever worked with videoconferencing systems. If you're still working on it (ditto for the authors of Be My Eyes) it may be worth getting in touch with someone along the lines of Pexip[1] to see if they're interested in assisting with infrastructure and handling of media so that it's possible to focus on wrapping that is some beautiful UX for this use case. [1] http://pexip.com/ http://pexip.com/
- mcguire 12y ago
  For completeness sake, I'd like to note that the OP doesn't seem to be cross-platform.

Tloewald 12y ago

It would be interesting to use something like bitcoin for social capital -- literally a favor bank.

kall 12y ago

Taptapsee[1] is a similar app that is commercial. Its a bit more limited / streamlined, in that it only sends one picture and one textual description instead of doing a video chat, but it does work really well. I agree that making it a commercial service can be a positive thing, because it makes a blind user not feel any guilt over using the service excessively. On the other the financial situations of people with disabilities are quite different in different countries, so my perspective here is limited. [1] http://www.taptapseeapp.com http://www.taptapseeapp.com

SrslyJosh 12y ago

#shithnsays

ilyaeck 12y ago

Would the creator(s) of Be My Eyes pitch in here and share their view of non-profit vs. for-profit? For instance, our company, Robin Labs, develops voice-driven solutions, technology that should be almost perfect for the visually impaired. We are willing to design a dedicated product that is just the right voice assistant for the blind if we can simply break even. We want to help, but cannot self-fund it entirely.

thekevan 12y ago

"Nice idea, but I think it would be better if it were commercial, with the blind user paying, the sighted helper getting paid, and the app developers getting a cut. The payment could be by the minute." What makes you think your opinion on this matters? That sounds inflammatory but it's a bit pompous to look at an idea and say, "nice, but you should make people pay for it."