Similar functions

In China and overseas, many visually impaired people are choosing Vizwiz, an app developed in 2010 by Jeff Bigham, an associate professor in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, United States. This app performs similar functions to the others by using artificial intelligence, or AI.

A user scans a question via a smartphone, and the AI provides the answer. This app offers support from volunteers, who also answer questions.

On its website, Vizwiz publishes and routinely updates questions that users are asked. Of the 20,000 questions asked up to October 2020, nearly 30 percent, or 4,974, were related to recognizing an item that could not be discerned by touch.

Sometimes, as the Vizwiz questions show, a user cannot tell if a dog is sitting in front of him or her.

Yang Qingfeng, who is blind and director of Golden Cane, a program based in Beijing aimed at helping the blind and visually impaired, said the apps are helpful, but only a small percentage of visually impaired people are using them.

The two Chinese apps have some 110,000 users, while there are 400,000 global users of the Be My Eyes app.

However, the number of visually impaired people in China has long exceeded 17 million, and is growing by 450,000 annually. "We need more ways to make life easier for them," Yang said.

In addition to apps to call volunteers, other barrier-free technological devices are on offer.

Chen Yan, a 49-year-old who is visually impaired, has a channel on the Douyin video-sharing platform, where she has 969,000 followers. She shares stories of her daily life, such as how she tunes pianos for customers, and how she travels with her husband, who also has poor eyesight.

She also shows how her guide dog Heimengmeng travels with them, and how the animal is either welcomed or rejected in public areas.

Two of the most frequently asked questions in her posts are: "Are you really blind? If so, then how do you make the videos, read our comments, and answer us?"

Chen showed a reporter how she makes recordings. She pointed the smartphone's camera in the general direction of her husband, with the phone able to tell if he was in the center of the screen. Chen then set up camera tripods and lighting.

After posting her work, she uses an app to read comments and interact with her audience.

"I can record static objects in my videos, but blind people may be able to record moving objects by using certain technologies," she said.

"Many viewers initially think that I have a team to help me, but after seeing me shooting the videos, they know that I work by myself."

Compared with video, audio is much easier for the visually impaired to handle. Everyone's Karaoke, a domestic app, allows users to sing karaoke to accompaniment, record their singing, share it and gain followers.

Several people are listed by the app as having the most followers. One of them, a blind woman who only wants to be known as Ms Yang, has 41,973 followers. She has uploaded 602 songs she has sung, each of which has been listened to by more than 10,000 people.

The app and similar ones such as Changba have adopted barrier-free modes, allowing blind users to listen to song lyrics they cannot see on screen, along with accompaniment.

Chen Hua, founder and CEO of Changba, said, "We asked our engineers to optimize all the app's 500-plus pages, so that visually impaired users can use them freely."