“BE MY EYES” iOS APP

The National Federation of the Blind estimates there are nearly 7 million sight impaired people living in the US. Nearly half are 65 and older, an age group that already faces its own challenges.

But help is on the way, thanks to new app created by Danish craftsman Hans Jørgen Wiberg that seeks to make life easier for the blind by connecting them with sighted volunteers. “Be My Eyes” allows anyone with a visual impairment to ask a sighted volunteer for help with something that requires normal vision.

To request help, the user opens the app and touches a button to ask for a volunteer. Volunteers receive a notification (only between the hours of 7 a.m. until 10 p.m.), which they can either accept or ignore.

The app launched just six weeks ago in Apple’s App store (no Android version is yet available) , and has attracted almost 40,000 volunteers and 3,000 blind and visually impaired users. It’s available worldwide, in 10 languages live in the AppStore and has been translated to 31.