Sight as a service

My mother saw a child banging their head on the floor of the oldest blind school in America. Tears streaming down her face, she looked at her husband and said, "My daughter's not going here." Since then i do things by myself and failures be damned. I am not better then someone who uses such services as you described, however i'm just a fly by the seat of my pants person. I would rather feel obligated to pay. someone for a service then have it provided for free. There are agencies for the blind who will give out things like fancy Braille displays, but they want to be all in your business. I don't work like that. I may not be great a lot, but i'm great being in my own space. I also do have be my eyes and aira but would rather feel comfortable using a professional interpreter. Just my two cents.

"Sight as a Service" does almost sound like a business name or a product. I suppose you would have professional seers or lookers, or would it be describers... Makes me think of those Amazon employees they call, "Pickers," who reach into the been a robot has brought them to find that talking tire gauge I just bought.

I recognize many of the things Siobhan says. Although, I did live at a blind school for a while after going blind. I can't put a positive spin on it.*

Before I went blind, I was just starting to learn some advanced drawing techniques, at least for a little boy. I've never quite achieved that fine a level of detail in my visual art, and either pass it on to other artists to finish or stick to what I can achieve. All that is to wonder, is what I do entirely my work if I received help from the sighted?
* After rereading and thinking about some of the other comments about blind schools, I should clarify that the specific blind school I went to had... problematic and systemic issues when I lived there as a teenager. The education part was all right, I suppose, but I left for public school full time after a few years.

Not bad for a job title.
I was a few or more years younger than you when I went blind. I was also considered weird and... substandard before I went blind. Can I get a refund for being weird and substandard? I'm not sure it has been helpful. I think we've talked before about how, for me, everything, sounds, textures etc, became instantly visual, and sometimes cartoon-like, at the moment of becoming blind. It's a bit frustrating to not be able to fully translate that back into something that can be visually shared with the sighted among us.

Lottie, I will say this for you: there's a lot of thought-provoking content that emerges from your posts. alas in a few years' time there'll be a swathe of youngsters with no critical thinking skills so it won't provoke any thought. I'm already seeing it with the law students whom i teach - the expectation that AI will do all your thinking for you, and that is not hyperbole; but for now it's jolly interesting stuff.

I went to a school for the blind. It was bloody brilliant. Equipped me splendidly and I headed off to Oxford thereafter, taking a double 1st class honours degree in English law with French law before becoming a barrister. whgen I hear about the ring of support workers surrounding people who went to a mainstream or normal school, I think to myself: goodness gracious how fortunate I was not to have that barrier between myself and normal socialisation! Speaking of which, yes, we did socialise and it's a nonsense that folk who go to special schools do not. So, to repeat, I am bloody glad I went to a special school. Hurrah for schools for the blind! god save the King!

Just to clarify something for those not in the UK - an ambiguity which occurred to me when I was reading this: there is no organisation called Sight as a Service. What Lottie's talking about emerges in several guises e.g. Access To work, which is an arm of what is now the department for Work and Pensions. Having clarified that, I will honour the spirit of the post by using the sight as a service terminology to refer to support workers, personal asistants and so on. No, not cleaners - I've got plenty of sighted mates who choose to have a cleaner. My wife and I (Mrs Bingo is sighted) have a cleaner. she's bloody good - almost as good as the special school central to the previous paragraph. She attends the Bingo Manor once a fortnight and does her stuff. Unfortunately, her client list is full so don't come on the radio asking me for her details.

I studied law at an interesting time. There's a hell of a lot of reading in law - far more than your bleedin' scientific subjects and what have you. Definitely more than medicine - blimey, honestly I never saw the blasted medical students doing any work! No wonder it takes them six years! anyway, where was I? Yes, I was saying that law involves a lot of reading. In the year 2000, when I matriculated at Oxford, we were at the crossroads: mroe and more material was being made available electronically but vast amounts were still paper-based. I did need the Disabled student's allowance to fund a reader, therefore, for (I think) one day per week. I would use her, and very occasionally him, strategically - to access sources in the main Bodleian Library which I could not easily scan into dear old Kurzweil, or to read cases that had still not been made available online. as time went on, moreover, I discovered that certain electronic resources weren't accessible - witness PDF files of journal articles containing only page images. Those remained inaccessible until the breakthrough virtual printer feature in, I think, Kurzweil version 8.0, which really was a game-changer. I did not, to be clear, use my reader to take notes. I took notes and attended lectures on my own or with my mates, which was much more fun. Nor did my reader act as a guide except when we were in the Bodleian Law Library.

Then there was a bit of a pause as I spent my third year in Paris studying French law. Now, the system over there is very different indeed and there isn't as much reading to do, plus it was rather easy as well, if I'm honest, so I'll gloss over that.

When I came back to Oxford for my fourth and final year, the digitisation of law resources had got to the point where there was no need at all for a reader or any other subject-related support. I still had to do mi' own fair share of scanning in using a flatbed scanner and Kurzweil, but the case law, journal articles, parliamentary papers, that sort of thing - all was easily available and accessible.

Bar school was interesting - there, you're learning the skills necessary to be a barrister (how to ask questions to witnesses, how to draft documents), rather than the substantive law. New challenges were presented by this but not sufficient to require a reader, save on one occasion where I had to prove my competence in paper-based legal research. aT the time, the bar standards Board was very anxious that we digital merchants would nevertheless be able to use paper sources competencly, so part of the legal research assessment we had to do had to involve paper sources.

Now then, we get to a paradox once I get to the bar: we're at the point where courts are requiring most things to be typed. It is no longer acceptable by this period, 2005 we're talking about when I was called to the bar, for policemen to put in handwritten witness statements. all witness statements must be typed. You're also beginning to see the requirement for draft orders, written submissionss, case summaries and other standard case management documents to be emailed to the court in advance. In short, about 99 percent of what I did was accessible. No help needed. But there remained that 1 percent - the handwritten documents, the photographic evidence, the legal research that must be carried out using sources not yet digitised and too compendious to scan, the sketch plans, where a support worker was necessary. Plus there were some right awkward bloody courts to navigate, such as the Royal Courts of Justice in london. For that 1 percent, then, I did need sight as a service. trouble was, I could not offer a peprson regular hours to provide sight as a service. I might have weeks on the spin where nothing was needed. why should taxpayers' money be spent on paying for someone to sit on their arse all day? I could only offer potential support workers what amounted to a zero hours contract, a bit like a lot of Labour MPs ironically offer. So I had a number of support workers and used to market the role as a paid internship or work experience. I had a good few aspiring lawyers assist me and they got a really hands on education as a result.

In my 13 years since joining BPP University in 2011 I have never had, nor have I needed, a support worker. This is the case even for the legal cases I still occasionally take in my capacity as a barrister. We're at the point now where trial bundles are digitised across the board and where handwriting is pretty much forbidden, even more so than when I started. sure, there are still photos and whatnot but I don't tend to do that sort of case these days.

One more point: I went back to Oxford in 2016 on an academic sabbatical to do postgrad study. Massive changes in this regard - Oxford now sdoes all the scanning in-house for its blind students. You ask them to scan something and they do so, emailing it to you afterwards. That's on the rare occasion something needs to be scanned in - not at all often. Most things, even medieval primary sources, are now digitised, and the biggest problem is deciphering the OCR results yielded from those images. The other massive change is GPS, of course. whereas my mates often guided me to different parts of hte University (Oxford University is spread all over the town) I was pretty much able to get around independently.

I hope that Lottie's still reading this. It's been long, hasn't it? If anyone else is too, well hurrah for that as well.

do I use sight as a service to help me find stuff, set stuff up, that sort of thing? Well, Mrs Bingo is sighted so she tends to assist with such matters, so that doesn't really count. I suppose I would otherwise check in with Be My Eyes from time to time.

Blimey this has been such a long comment I've pretty much forgotten what the post was about! we'll leave it there, then. Roger and out.

If any applevisers have aught to do with The Craft, that presents certain challenges. They will know what I am referring to.

above my level.

I'm familiar with his ideas and, quite simply, they don't stack up in our context, not without a great deal of thought and changes to the way a lot of subjects are assessed.

I'm going to be controversial here, but AtW and welfare spending in general needs to be reviewed. aTW probably needs to be better targeted and should focus more on pre-work or into-work employment support. Certainly the DSA needs to be thought through better. There are still massively expensive recommendations and a fair share of abuse. There are adjustments universities are called upon to make which unfairly advantage the disabled student. I've thrown notetakers for blind students out of my classes before because they have turned up without the student in tow. There is no such thing as government money.

As for EU initiatives, the only EU initiative worth pursuing is a defence and security agreement, and only then if member states of the EU (with some honourable exceptions) get their act together on defence spending and intelligence. I certainly wouldn't be in the EU for the sake of accessibility - plenty of nations do very well for blind people without being in the EU. but that is to segway into political matters which is forbidden forbidden forbidden. Bingo's a Brexiteer, that much has been made very clear.

Wow, there is much to process here. I am going to attempt a semi-intelligent response. Stay tuned...

In terms of the age of an individual's blindness, that is to say how long any given person has been without useful eyesight, I am likely a baby amongst the greater population of AppleVis. I have been totally blind for more than a decade, but less than two. In fact, I spent the first thirty years of my life in my hometown of Daytona, as a fully sighted individual; living my life as best as I could, given my situation and shortcomings. I worked many, many jobs during the sighted part of my life; from delivering pizzas via Domino's, and packages via UPS, to Data Entry for the local (lan line) phone company, and working a cash register for Blockbuster Video, back when video rentals were a thing. Fact is I had many, many "jobs", but no real career, and no real direction. I guess I just lived life one day at a time and to hell with "adulting". When I was not working, I was doing outdoor recreational things like surfing and wake boarding, canoeing and kayaking, skate boarding and rollerblading. I even spent a handful of summers at a few theme parks like Wet n' Wild, Disney World, and Universal Studios: Islands of Adventure. When I wasn't outside, I was gaming. I began gaming as a child, back when Pac-Man was a thing, and never really gave it up. Until...

Sadly, and as exciting and carefree as all of that sounds, I grew up poor, and as such never thought I would ever do much with my life; never thought I would attend college, or Uni for you folks across the pond. Yet I had a fairly fulfilling life. I had a decent circle of friends, had my fair share of romantic entanglements, and was for the most part content with my life.

Then 2009 happened, and while i will not bore you all with my sob story, the end result was that I began losing my eyesight due to a condition that caused my retinas to detach from my eyes. To make matters worse, I went all gung ho with a retina specialist, a team of them actually, in an (ill-informed) attempt to correct the problem through surgery. The end result was losing all vision instnantly in my left eye, only to lose it all in my right eye mere months later.

On one hand I got to "see" the world, and I am thankful for that experience. While I do not have anything but absolute respect for those who were either born blind, or were blind at such a young age that their skills are simply amazing, supernatural even. Still, I am thankful for the years I had vision. I am also incredibly thankful for the school for the blind I ended up at wherein I learned mobility, living skills, and of course touch typing with a screen reader; JAWS in this case.

Since my induction into the world of the sightless, I have gained many new experiences; I not only had the opportunity to attend college and graduate with a degree in Information Technologies, I have also got to travel a little, got to experience married life for a handful of years, got to spend six years with an amazing Seeing Eye Dog, and am now extending my experience and education through Certifications via Cisco Networks.

I have also rediscovered gaming! It took many years to get to a point where I was feeling brave enough to attempt to play any type of video game. I think what really enticed me were the "Hosted Games" and the "Choice Of" games available on iOS. From there I got into some clever audio games and eventually found my way back to mainstream gaming via Xbox and PlayStation, and PC gaming now that I have discovered the wonderful world of Gamepass Ultimate.

Regarding readers, helpers, and assistants I have dealt with my share of each, some were provided for me by whatever state funded institute I was a client of at that particular time, or my college provided services. I have also had to hire people exclusively for things such as going over mail, or getting rides to various places like doctors appointments, grocery runs, or the local post office. Having said all of that, I do not adhere to some of the cult mentality that is ever present (at least here in the US) regarding how a particular task should be performed. I am of the belief that whatever works is how you do something, and damn anybody who says any different. Perhaps I am influenced by my former school's philosophy of "use whatever resource is available".

I have learned much in the time I have been without eyesight, and have experienced even more; most good, some bad, and some that were somewhere inbetween, and while I would love to be able to see again, I am very glad to live in an era where we have so much assistive tech to make our lives tolerable, enjoyable, and hell even pleasurable. Now if only I can achieve gainful employment over doing contract work, I could die a happy man.

I had to go into dire straits after my insurance ran out. God bless America. . .

In the US, SSPs, or Support Service Providers, vary by state. Some states have no SSP services. And for those that do, the system is entirely different within each state.

In Colorado, where I live, persons who are both vision and hearing impaired, and therefore qualify for the federal FCC ICanConnect program, are eligible to receive a limited number of SSP hours per month. For the past three years, I've used an SSP at an annual writing conference, a non-profit organization's holiday party, and (most recently) at a Rubik's Cube speed-solving competition.

I have used an SSP out-of-state twice, in the state of Washington, to assist with airport transport, groceries, AirBnB orientation, and guide me at conferences. Washington has a state-paid program similar to Colorado's, but of course these state programs are only for state residents. Consequently, I found an SSP in Washington and contracted with her directly, paying out of my own pocket, which was probably not much on a hourly basis, but it adds up fast when you're retired and it's coming from your own bank account, easily doubling the cost of the trip. Consequently, I limit my trips out of state or find alternative solutions.

I'm buoyed by recently developed AI capabilities to process video. Such capabilities might largely supplant SSPs for many of my use cases.

Hi Lottie,
Well sorry for the two abbreviations so close together, but it's true. I want an AI PA, an artificially inteligent personal assistant. That sounds and looks a bit strange I know. I haven't got a PA. I looked into getting one a year or so ago to help me out with some things, but I couldn't afford one. If you have too much money in savings, you have to contribute financially here. Looking back and knowing what it's like for people who do have PAs, I'm glad I didn't get one, at least not a human one. What if you don't get on with your PA? What if you do get on at first but end up clashing? What if you're tired, and you still have to go out and do stuff with your PA because if you don't, you could get fewer alocated hours next financial year? That can happen in some countries. Being overreliant on a human assistant isn't good anyway. Bingo, I can't believe you get notetakers in your class without the students! The student should be doing the learning and the work, not the notetaker! I never saw the point or advantage of having notetakers at university anyway. I was always perfectly capable of writing notes for myself on my braillelite. I was using braille all the time back then anyway, so I didn't even have the laim excuse of not being able to hear my screen reader and the lecturer at the same time. That excuse is only valid if you need hearing aids. There are volume controls on your computer or braille device for a reason. So my AI PA. It would be inside a pair of glasses, preferably the Meta glasses since they sound the best at the moment. It would have a video feed when I'm walking if I'm somewhere unfamiliar. I could tell it I want to go to the local shopping centre, and it could walk to the bus stop with me, I'd get on the bus, and then it would tell me when to get off. Of course it would be able to access online maps. So when I'm at the shopping centre, it would look up all the info about that particular shopping centre on the internet, and it would work out where all the shops are in relation to one another. So I could tell it which shops I want to go to, and it would direct me to each one. I could tell it to walk with me to my brother or sister's places. There are so many things it could do. A real world example: this week I wanted a description of a graph for work. Something I wouldn't have been able to do a couple of years ago. So I sent the image to Access AI, got a really good description, and sent the description for verification to an Aira agent. According to the agent, the description was perfect! In fact, I sent a couple of images I wanted to use for work to get verified by an Aira agent, and they were perfect both times. Graphs, charts and pictures are another thing to enhance my work just that bit more. It would book flights and tickets for me, because that would be much quicker than battling with often difficult to use or totally inaccessible websites and needing someone sighted to help me. I can't wait for my AI PA to come along. It would cost £20 a month. I think £50 would be the maximum I would pay. But it would have to have navigation abilities. If I had paid for a human PA with all its possible disadvantages, I would have paid approx. £250 a month, 12 months of the year, because this would include holiday and sick pay. I'll stick to an AI PA, please.

Hi Paul,
Your comments about having to pay for a PA made me remember services like Travel Eyes. This service provides extortionately priced holidays for the blind. The reason they're so extortionately priced: you're paying for a PA as well as your holiday. I have never, and will never pay for a PA, at least not with the way things stand. If I win the lottery and get bored, then I might do. But until then, an AI PA can't come fast enough. I won't pay for this crap on principle. I would rather not go on holiday or to a conference than pay a significant sum of money just to navigate around and network, when sighted people can navigate and network for free. I don't mind paying for a holiday or a conference ticket, just like sighted people do, but when I have to pay extra just to um well like, walk around and do all the things sighted people do easily, screw that. I would rather go with a friend, family member, go on my own and ask for help where I can, or not at all. Still waiting for my AI PA to walk through the door.

Hi Lottie,
Let's say Aira was integrated with Voice Vista, Google Maps, and other things, I might pay for that if I knew I was going to use it often enough. That would be cheaper than employing a PA, or even hiring a PA to go on holiday. £50 a month would be OK, provided it works nearly %99 of the time. Only problem is, I'm moving to an area with not so great network coverage, just like the area I live in now, so we'll see.
What about a CoPilot+ screen reader that sits along side us as we use our computers and helps out?
It depends. I was dead against type ahead when I saw it because it sounded like it could do everything NVDA could do and nothing else. Having a screen reader that writes emails for me, browses already accessible websites, and writes basic word documents is a waste of time. However, if I had a screen reader that accesses and clicks on buttons on accessible websites, books flights for me using said inaccessible websites, creates visually appealing PowerPoint presentations, double-checks more complex word documents to make sure they're formatted correctly, OCRs inaccessible documents preserving all formatting and with no typos or hallucinations (we're nearly there with GPT for this when it doesn't hallucinate), edits screenshots to cut out all my desktop icons and other stuff that appears in them and solves all captchas, even those sliding puzzle things, then I'm interested. But a screen reader that replaces NVDA and does everything that does and nothing else, no way. I remember Paul Marts got Type Ahead to click on a search field on a website when he couldn't find it, that's the sort of thing I mean. Today, I was dealing with a difficult to use website, and I couldn't be bothered to keep battling with it to find exactly the courses I was looking for. So I asked Chat GPT to have a look for me, and it came up with the goods in a minute or so with some prompting. That's the sort of thing I mean.

With exciting new tech integrations, making access to visual information more seamless and empowering. The recent collaborations between Be My Eyes, Aira, and Meta are perfect examples of how technology is transforming everyday experiences for blind and visually impaired users.

**Be My Eyes on Meta Ray-Ban Glasses**: This partnership with Meta is a game-changer, bringing Be My Eyes directly to Ray-Ban smart glasses, allowing users to access hands-free assistance from a global network of volunteers. By simply saying, “Hey Meta, Be My Eyes,” you can connect with a sighted volunteer who sees through your glasses’ camera, offering support with reading, navigating complex environments, or simply getting descriptions of surroundings. This innovation takes the convenience of “Sight as a Service” to the next level, providing real-time help while keeping your hands completely free. It’s set to roll out soon in the US, UK, Canada, Ireland, and Australia, making it an accessible option for millions.

**Aira’s Pilot Program on Meta Ray-Ban Glasses**: Aira is also joining forces with Meta to integrate their professional visual interpreting services with Ray-Ban smart glasses. This integration offers a hands-free experience that enhances mobility and ease of use, making it easier to navigate, read, and interact with the world without the need to hold your phone. Aira’s service connects users with professionally trained visual interpreters, providing a higher level of tailored support compared to volunteer-based models. The current beta program aims to refine this technology further with input from early testers, with the goal of making visual interpreting even more seamless and accessible.

These developments represent a significant leap forward for “Sight as a Service,” blending cutting-edge technology with real-world needs. Both Be My Eyes and Aira are pushing the boundaries of how assistive tech can be used, providing users with more choices, whether they prefer volunteer help or professional interpreting. As these integrations mature, they promise to empower users with greater independence, making everyday tasks less daunting and more manageable.