BeSpecular, the app lending vision to the blind

“Hi, would you please tell me if this outfit would work for my interview?”. This is the question that Estine asks to BeSpecular, the app that provides answers through voice messages to help visually impaired people (VIP) make decisions in their daily life. In this sense, the app connects blind people to volunteers around the world who want to lend their eyes to the blind. But how does it work? On a daily basis, the visually impaired person takes a photo of what he or she needs. This photo is sent to the BeSpecular community of sightlings, who are available to reply with a voice or text message. Within minutes, the VIP person receives a reply and then rates out of 5 starts the helpfulness of the sightling.

BeSpecular is available both on Google Play and on the Apple Store. According to the information provided by the organisation, there are 1 billion people with disabilities in this world, of which 285 million people are estimated to be visually impaired. From this huge amount of people, 90% live in low-income households. Chris Venter, one of BeSpecular’s blind users, has shared his experience on a blog article saying that easy things like for example reading the label on food stuffs can be very frustrating. "Having a pair of 'on demand’ eyes readily available is what I call accessibility in action", stated Venter.
 

More testimonials have also explained the advantages of the app. Lucas Leiby has written that those who have assisted her in what’s happening in pictures have been extraordinarily kind, descriptive and tentative. Also, sightlings can post a review, as Mark Belcher did: “Every time I get the opportunity to help somebody it feels like I’ve just won the lottery!”.

The app is being used in the United States, England, South Africa and Italy. The app was launched on World Sight Day on October 12, 2016. So far had around 10.000 subscribers with a roughly equal split between the VIP and volunteers, according to BeSpecular, based in Johannesburg. At the moment, after being registered the app is operating in English and Italian.

Stephanie Cowper, a 24-year-old Johannesburg-based social entrepreneur, developed BeSpecular, with three other students as part of a summer school course in technology entrepreneurship at Stanford University in Caifornia, United States. They thought how to use technology to improve the world where we live and found that one in every seven people has a disability. This is the origin of the app. "Often people think they can just create an app and become a billionaire - it is really hard",said Cowper for Forbes Woman Africa.