It all started more than 10 years ago and at the time we couldn’t really think this could happen, but here we are: today, over 500,000 people who are blind or have low vision have joined the Be My Eyes community to get real time video assistance anywhere and at any time.
This is an incredible milestone that comes in one of the most important times for Be My Eyes’ history: last month we launched the beta test for our new feature within the app, Virtual Volunteer, a tool powered by OpenAI’s new GPT-4 language model, which contains a dynamic new image-to-text generator. A few weeks ago we opened the beta test to companies who will now be able to better serve their customers by prioritizing accessibility.
But this is just the last step of an incredible story that started back in 2012, when Be My Eyes’ founder, Hans Jørgen Wiberg, presented his idea at Startup Weekend Aarhus, Denmark and officially started this incredible adventure that is now more than 10 years long.
Since 2012 we have celebrated many milestones together: in 2015, when we first launched the app in the App store, it only took 24 hours to get over 10,000 sign-ups. The community kept on growing at an incredible pace, until May 2018 when we finally reached 1,000,000 sign-ups in the app. Today, Be My Eyes counts over 7 million individuals, and among them 500,000 people who are blind or have low vision have decided to join Be My Eyes to get real time video assistance through our app.
Whether you are a blind or low-vision user or a volunteer, we hope that being a member of the Be My Eyes Community empowers you in your life. Remember that volunteers are available 24/7 to assist you with any task: matching clothes, cooking, doing laundry or navigating inaccessible websites, you name it! A Be My Eyes volunteer is already waiting for your call, don’t make them wait any longer! All you have to do is open the Be My Eyes app and call the first available volunteer. It’s as simple as it sounds!
We cannot be more excited about the future of Be My Eyes and what’s coming in the following months and years, and we can’t wait to share it with all of you. Don’t forget to spread the word and to share your Be My Eyes experience with relatives and friends, so we can welcome and empower even more people in the Be My Eyes Community and celebrate even more incredible milestones together!