The app is called Be My Eyes and allows blind people to phone or message for help. The app seems to allow video and photos to be sent and the sighted person on the other end can send a message to the blind person, answering whatever inquiry they have.
[This is a set of screenshots about the app called Be My Eyes.
First photo: The overview page for the app. The top says “Be My Eyes- helping the blind.”
Second photo: The preview page on the app store. It shows two phones. The one on the left is titled “Volunteer” and says “Join the community and help it grow.” The one on the right is titled “Blind.” The phone under the title has “Call first available volunteer,” written in large font.
Third photo: More previews. Shows the messages between two people texting each other. The visually impaired person sent a picture of two cans of food, and is asking which one is beans. Another example shows the person sending a picture of their milk carton, and asking if it is expired.
Fourth photo: An iphone lock screen. A notification from the app says “a blind or visually impaired person is calling for help.”
Fifth photo: The profile page of a sighted user named Francis, who speaks English and Español. The top says there are 74,768 Blind and 1,033,846 Volunteers using the app.
Sixth photo: Text that says “Learn how to answer a call. When a blind or visually impaired person requests help, the app notifies multiple volunteers, and the first to respond is connected. The notification might look different whether your phone is locked or unlocked. Here you can try both scenarios.
Seventh photo: A notification from the app on an iphone home screen. The instructions say to pull the notification down or tap it to answer a call.
Eighth photo: The same notification on an iphone lock screen. The instructions say to tap it or slide it to answer the call.]
Please reblog the version of this post with image descriptions. It’s a service for blind folks, posted about in a format blind folks don’t have access to (without the descriptions).
Also, if you’re willing to download and use this app but you don’t go out of your way to add image descriptions to the images you share, please reevaluate that! Contact me if you need help adding image descriptions to things.
This app is actually very useful. The way sighted people are talking about it is not.
I can’t remember if I revlogged this before, but just making sure it’s reblogged with the image descriptions.
It gets rid of theme stuff, basically. I don’t mind looking at people’s pretty pages mostly, but a lot of the time their text is either tiny or appallingly difficult to read – which is fine for some purposes but drives me nuts when I’m trying to read an excerpt of their fic or, well, any long text post.
BUT I learned today that you can smack a /mobile on the end of a post to make it immediately unattractive but readable. For example and/or testing, here’s a URL for a random piece of writing I posted a few months back:
I had no idea this was a thing and I will be using it a lot now because my eyes are pretty bad.
This has been a psa - I encourage (but do not strictly require) you to reblog this psa
also really helpful if you’re actually on mobile but the app seems unable to open a url for whatever dumb reason
It really does work to put the “mobile” at the end. But it is a flaming pain in the rear to have to keep doing it over and over again just to read some sentence that may or may not be worth the effort. I really wish in my dream world that people cared more about legibility and communication. One can have a nice layout without it being illegible to 2/3 of their potential readers. Or is that the point? The “I’m too cool for you” aspect of having an unreadable blog.
—my visually-challenged-cry-for-help of the day!
1. This is good info to know. Sharing for those who might want it.
2. I’m sure there’s a way to use a browser extension to do this automatically. Let me do some research…
Okay, did the research. Looks like what you really want to do is change your “browser agent”, basically, make your web browser pretend to be a mobile browser (like an iphone browser or Firefox mobile) so the web server shows you the mobile page.
Then, changing between mobile and desktop views is just a menu selection.
This might be a helpful usability/accessibility technique for many websites, as in many cases the mobile version is simpler and easier to read/navigate.
(Another approach I like is to use a service like Readability.)
It gets rid of theme stuff, basically. I don’t mind looking at people’s pretty pages mostly, but a lot of the time their text is either tiny or appallingly difficult to read – which is fine for some purposes but drives me nuts when I’m trying to read an excerpt of their fic or, well, any long text post.
BUT I learned today that you can smack a /mobile on the end of a post to make it immediately unattractive but readable. For example and/or testing, here’s a URL for a random piece of writing I posted a few months back:
I had no idea this was a thing and I will be using it a lot now because my eyes are pretty bad.
This has been a psa - I encourage (but do not strictly require) you to reblog this psa
also really helpful if you’re actually on mobile but the app seems unable to open a url for whatever dumb reason
It really does work to put the “mobile” at the end. But it is a flaming pain in the rear to have to keep doing it over and over again just to read some sentence that may or may not be worth the effort. I really wish in my dream world that people cared more about legibility and communication. One can have a nice layout without it being illegible to 2/3 of their potential readers. Or is that the point? The “I’m too cool for you” aspect of having an unreadable blog.
—my visually-challenged-cry-for-help of the day!
1. This is good info to know. Sharing for those who might want it.
2. I’m sure there’s a way to use a browser extension to do this automatically. Let me do some research…
Study: Rise of Psychoactive Substance Use Among Older Adults Poses Risks
Drug and alcohol use among older Americans has increased sharply over the past decade, as Baby Boomers use psychoactive substances at a higher rate than previous generations. This creates a growing public health problem: rising numbers of older adults at risk for harm from drug use, including substance use disorders. Older adults are often more susceptible to the harms of psychoactive drug use due to age-associated physiological changes, social factors such as increased isolation, increases in comorbidity and the use of medications that may interact with a range of drugs.
Benjamin Han, MD, MPH, is a geriatrician, addiction medicine physician and clinician-researcher in the Division of Geriatrics, Gerontology and Palliative Care in the Department of Medicine at UC San Diego School of Medicine. Along with UC San Diego medical student Jason Leddy, UC San Diego undergraduate student Francisco Lopez and Joseph J. Palamar, PhD, an associate professor at the New York University Langone Medical Center, he recently published a new study in JAMA Ophthalmology that found an association between severe visual impairment in older adults and a higher prevalence of cannabis use as well as substance use disorder, including alcohol use disorder and nicotine dependence.
In this Q & A, we’ve asked Han to break down some key points of this study:
Question: How prevalent is the issue of older adults using psychoactive substances and how does this compare to substance use in other age groups?
Answer: While psychoactive substance use is lower among older adults compared to younger adults, its use has increased sharply among people age 65 and older. Past-year cannabis use has increased from 0.4% in 2006 to 4.2% in 2018 among people age 65 and older, according to an analysis of the National Survey on Drug Use and Health data that I published with Dr. Palamar in 2020. Additionally, a study I conducted along with Dr. Palamar and Dr. Alison Moore, chief of Division of Geriatrics, Gerontology and Palliative Care here at UC San Diego found sharp increases in unhealthy alcohol use.
Q: What types of health or mental health issues are older adults using drugs for?
A: There are many reasons older adults use psychoactive substances, including to treat undertreated chronic symptoms such as insomnia, chronic pain and anxiety. It is also important to note that increasing isolation can be a risk factor for risky psychoactive substance use, which is relevant to this paper because vision impairment, particularly among older adults, can increase isolation, lead to significant psychological stress and loss of independence.
Q: Has the COVID-19 pandemic caused an increase in use?
A: The pandemic has been particularly difficult for many older adults, often increasing their isolation. Some studies suggest that drug use and drug-related overdose deaths have increased among older individuals during the pandemic, but data on this currently remains limited.
Q: What signs should loved ones and physicians be on the lookout for?
A: Due to physiological changes due to aging, the presence of chronic disease and increased use of prescription medications, older adults — especially those with impairment (such as visual impairments) — are at risk for harm related to use of psychoactive substance use. Intoxication can potentially lead to marked deficits in coordination, leading to an increased risk of injury or worsening of chronic diseases. Unhealthy psychoactive drug use can often be difficult to detect among older adults, so it’s important that clinicians ask all of their older patients about drug and alcohol use.
Universal design is a principle wherein you find the thing that the largest number of people possible can access, and then use that. The classic example of this is a ramp (vs. stairs or a curb), because pretty much anybody, no matter what tools they use or don’t use to move around, can get up a ramp, whereas stairs and curbs are barriers to people who use wheels to get around.
The great thing about universal design is that while it is often initially made for people with particular disabilities, it often turns out to be a better design for lots of people for lots of reasons! Like curb cuts, they are great if you have a stroller or a rolly suitcase or a bike or a wheelchair. Or text-to-speech software, designed for people with visual impairments or reading disabilities but turned out to be a lifesaver for me when I was writing my thesis and needed to read like 3000 articles a day but also wanted to be able to clean my house and cook food.
Universal design is the default for everyonebecause disabled people shouldn’t have to be constantly asking for special accommodation and finding the special button that will make something work for them, that’s exhausting and othering. The world should just be designed to allow you to live your life in it, you know, like it is for nondisabled (and otherwise non-oppressed) people.
I’m not visually impaired and I don’t personally know anyone I could ask. As soon as I see a visually impaired person be like “hey this doesn’t actually help” I will be against the #newblue. But until then…stop whining. No, this doesn’t in any way fix the nsfw-pocalypse or the pornbots or nazis or other issues on the site. Maybe it’s a little bit of a “problem one…NO” situation. But like, it’s fine. It might actually help some folks.
Your eyes are NOT “bleeding.” You won’t even notice the difference in three days.
Personally, I like it. It reminds me of the color the sky turns over the Hudson on warm evenings in July. I miss July.
