You're listening to a Community Story from Be My Eyes.


Hi, my name is Adam Craddock. I am legally blind. I was born with a congenital cone-rod dystrophy. So very briefly, that's a degradation of the central vision, like a macular degeneration, as well as peripheral blind spots, contrasted to an RP, retinitis pigmentosa. That's essentially a tunnel vision where all of the periphery is gone. Mine is almost the inverse where there's almost no central and what I have is a little bit of periphery. So Be My Eyes, I first became aware of that is in...


I do subscribe to certain technical and technology trade magazines and it mentioned this app in there. And then I'm also a leader in a local group here where I live that we call the VIP. It's a support group for visually impaired persons. And not only do we provide educational sessions and information sessions, we always have a bit of a group forum where anybody can share new insights, new products, ideas, anecdotes. So, Be My Eyes came up as well as a well-known competitor as new tools people could use.


It generated some interest in general, and so I also looked into much more detail. Very intrigued by their business model, different from the competitor in that it's free to the users and it is based upon the generosity of its huge network of volunteers that are available 24/7. I was absolutely fascinated by that model. I was trying to figure out where and when would I use this? It certainly was valuable. However, my upbringing, which is good and bad in this type of situation, I was raised to be very independent, very self-sufficient. And the irony with that, I have been a very slow adopter of technology through my whole life. Whether that's CCTV magnification or even with my own use of the iPhone, it was a very slow adoption, and I regret that. So, I'm trying to become much more open to technology. Be My Eyes, boy, that sounds great for other people. My first use of it was not for what people mostly use it for, which is to use sighted people and the camera to do fairly regular everyday tasks.


It's, "I dropped my keys on the floor. Can you help me find them? Can you read this recipe for me? I don't know what it says." What I would call fairly standard, regular transactional items. But another one of their features is specialty services and they have a direct connection to the disability help desks for both Microsoft and Google. And this is huge, and I don't care whether you're sighted or not. Technology has grown so sophisticated, it's very difficult to fix problems when they arise.


So number one, to have a direct line to anybody who can help you I think is phenomenal. And then number two, to have a specially dedicated line for those of us who do have challenges in the visual arena is invaluable. And then for the first time I was using it, when I called in, I was... I'm a bit of a realist, my wife says cynic, I call it a realist, was concerned that... Again, the base model is that Be My Eyes uses your phone's camera in order to see what the disabled person can't see.


And I was thinking, well, this is really going to be very hard. They're going to try and see my computer screen. And then here I'm going to try and see the computer screen and how are we going to orchestrate that? And lo and behold, these are advanced technology companies, and so they remote into your computer and they really just fix your problems. So my first interactions and many of my ongoing and most of my interactions have been with that sort of technology help, which is one aspect of Be My Eyes.


And what's really impressed me is what I see as a huge potential in Be My Eyes. But I wonder just what our capabilities would be in terms of using that more standard sighted camera approach. How about watching my son's lacrosse game? I wonder if they would have folks that are interested in watching lacrosse with me for an hour. And if I can point out my son or the number on his penny, they can then start to call the action for me. So I might have a personal lacrosse announcer.


That might be something, or going to the opera or the ballet. We don't really do that, and I use my vision as a nice excuse to not do that. But I wonder if many other people might enjoy that, or even in terms of a lot of this video streaming these days. There's often a lot of action, I know, in video sequences that many of us don't pick up on and certain services do have audio descriptions. But there are still many movies, many shows that don't have that, and Be My Eyes might be able to play in that space.


My interactions with the volunteers, again, these were the specialty help desks, but it was really very invigorating in terms of working with Microsoft. I've worked with several folks. As we were working through, very interestingly enough, after about five or 10 minutes, a rooster started to crow in the background. It turns out these were folks in the Philippines, and at the time that I was calling was early to late evening, our time in the US, very early morning there.


And they were finishing out, I guess, the graveyard shift. They were still very spry, very awake. We had some fun laughs about that. A different time I called and got an Irish gentleman. He was really a funny fellow, we had some very good laughs. He promised to send me a box of Lucky Charms cereal. That was really funny and a great set of interactions. It's a lot more than just a pure transaction with these folks. It's actually pleasurable if it can be when you're having to pull the teeth on these technology aspects.


I see a lot of additional future potential for Be My Eyes. I'm one of these people, when I become interested and passionate about something, I will actually try to take the reins and do something about it. And I've actually foisted myself upon Be My Eyes. It's a bit of a long convoluted story that I won't take the time to share here, but I wormed my way into meeting with one of their board members and expressed my interest and my background. He was very intrigued and interested.


My background is in the human resources and human capital arena, both as having been an executive and a management consultant in that area for 25 years. And I've been working with their head of national sales as well. We actually think there... And they've actually created a product to market to organizations that would have a lot of value for their human resources, for their people, and for that human resources function.


And as I think through it, and you think through what the offering is for Be My Eyes, it's people within an organization that can service both their internal and external stakeholders. In terms of externals, who are folks that interact with organizations? Well, one is prospective employees or candidates. That's the talent acquisition and recruitment functions in human resources. There is a very significant blind and visually impaired population, as well as an aging workforce.


That's very well documented as people are working longer and push them off retirement much longer. So navigation of websites, navigation of career sites, filling out of applications is an area where help can be offered with Be My Eyes. And if you read these websites, there are certain compliance things required. And at the bottom, you'll often see, "We at X organization are an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate against," and then there's a list, the standard list of the various protected classes that they don't discriminate against.


And one of them being disabled individuals. Here, Be My Eyes is a product that actually enables them to not discriminate and to actually provide accommodation, which is a compliance requirement. Be My Eyes can step straight into that space to help companies provide that compliance. That's not necessarily the neat fun stuff to have to use the C word. However, in addition to those sorts of stakeholders, there's also the customers for an organization.


And often blind and disabled, visually disabled individuals work in contract management roles and document management roles. They may very well need to work with websites and file transfers on websites. And again, Be My Eyes can very much be of help in terms of that sort of navigation. The other main stay that we're thinking about here is also on the internal customers, which are the employees.


And if you think of that, Be My Eyes core offering, where they can read things, they could read documents, they could read things on the screens. Within an organization there very often is confidential or proprietary information, and you wouldn't necessarily want a third party, meaning an independent or a stranger, reading your payroll statements or reading the screen of your human resources information system with things like social security numbers or bank routing numbers.


However, if an employer is providing this, now your employees can get that assistance. And it can be broader than just HR and payroll. It would be if you need help with your internal IT infrastructure or facilities, or security, or finance. So again, this is a new market, a new need that I think that Be My Eyes can fill. So, I'm very excited about that. Overall, I just am thoroughly enthusiastic about Be My Eyes as a product and service and humongous thanks and recognition to go out to the many thousands of volunteers globally that support this group.


One of the greatest problems they have is to continue to grow the customer base of this awesome product, and what a great problem to have, which is to grow by doing good. That is a mantra that I believe that Be My Eyes holds to and drives forward. The fact that you can do good by doing good is one of my own also, one of my own averages that I stick to. So I'm very proud to be affiliated with Be My Eyes and to be a Be My Eyes user. And I strongly recommend that you check it out.


Give it a try. You don’t necessarily need to be a user, and I would strongly encourage you to try being a volunteer.


Thank you for listening to this Community Story from Be My Eyes. You can share your story too. Send it to mystory@bemyeyes.com. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel, download our app, or visit bemyeyes.com/community-stories for more.