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“AI has revolutionised my daily life,” says Louise Plunkett from Norwich. “I can’t recognise people, even my own husband or my children. When my children were younger, I used to have to teach them how to come to me when I met them at the school playground.”
“I’m quite a stubborn person,” says Ms Plunket. “I don’t like asking for help or admitting I need help, so using the AI tool is useful for things when other humans aren’t around.”
“She says she might use it to check which is the female toilets, or read the ingredients on food packaging, or read a letter.
However, she feels that AI can sometimes be hit or miss. “The downside with AI is that sometimes it gives you too many details. You sometimes just want the basic information of what is in front of you, but it will go above and beyond, and offer up mood and emotions…it feels like it’s one step too far.”
Be My Eyes, which is free to users, makes money by signing up companies to its paid-for directory service where they can provide information and numbers to the blind and low-vision community.
Mr Henriksen says AI won’t replace the need for human connection. “At Be My Eyes, people are still choosing to call a volunteer too. The blind population in the Western world are generally not young when they start to experience vision loss…it’s more skewed towards the elderly population and this [AI] might add a later extra of complexity. Humans are faster and potentially more accurate.”
Other firms also have products to help those visually impaired. Featuring a voice assistant, WeWalk is an AI-powered cane that detects obstacles and offers accessible navigation and live public transport updates.
“WeWalk is very important for us, it helps navigation and is a very important symbol as it shows our independence and autonomy,” says Gamze Sofuoğlu, WeWalk’s product manager.
Robin Spinks, head of inclusive design at the RNIB (Royal National Institute of Blind People), and who has low vision, is a huge advocate of AI – he uses AI most days. For example, he turns to ChatGPT to assist with his workflow, giving him a summary of development in certain areas in relation to work, or even to help plan a paddle board trip, and to the Google Gemini AI tool to help him locate items.
He points to Google Gemini. “For example, with that you can record meetings and it assists with you voice labels and an account of a meeting, it’s genuinely helpful and it’s about making people’s lives easier.”
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