Marin’s Guide Dogs for the Blind uses mobile app to help clients with what the canines can’t tell them

For visually impaired people, their guide dogs have their backs. But what’s missing sometimes is the vision to see beyond what a dog can provide.

That’s why Guide Dogs for the Blind in San Rafael joined forces on Sept. 14 with Be My Eyes, a software platform firm founded in 2012 by Denmark native Hans Jørgen Wiberg, a furniture craftsman who is also visually impaired. The company began operating in San Francisco in 2018.

“If only I had another pair of eyes … I wouldn’t have to ask family and friends for help,” Wiberg said with whimsy, explaining the app during a TED talk.

The app connects sighted volunteers with Guide Dogs for the Blind clients with a video and audio service on the mobile app that the user can tap and ask for help identifying little unknowns they encounter through the day. Four million volunteers have signed up with Be My Eyes to provide real-time assistance.

Think of it as a specialized, advanced cross between a voice-activated assistant (like Apple’s Siri or Google’s Alexa), a telephone switchboard and the Yellow Pages for those with a visual disability. For example, clients may need to know how to negotiate knots in their dogs’ harnesses and would point the device to the objects they need help untying. The volunteers on the other end of the mobile device may help with that or with reading labels of the clients’ dog food.

Be My Eyes’ clients, like Guide Dogs for the Blind, are able to tap into volunteers recruited by the tech firm. Those start-up volunteers serve as the eyes and ears for app users and their canine companions faced with tasks such as reading labels and gauging the guide dog’s physical condition.

“For many visually impaired people, the app is a lifeline,” Be My Eyes Vice President Will Butler told the Business Journal. “We’re about human support, when the blind want to talk to a person. It creates a connection.”

Be My Eyes has gained partnerships with computer industry giants such as Google and Microsoft, which pay monthly fees for listings that offer tech service. Proctor & Gamble lists brand profiles with video-calling capability for fees as well. The company declined to reveal what those fees are.

During the COVID-19 crisis, Be My Eyes executives have waived the monthly fees to nonprofits such as Guide Dogs for the Blind for philanthropic reasons, Butler added.

“We’re donating software solutions to these nonprofits during these difficult times,” said Butler, who has also worked to market services at LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired in San Francisco.

Marin County’s guide dog service, which launched in 1942, signed onto the program to help eliminate the social isolation that goes with being visually impaired.

An army of Be My Eyes volunteers is available Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. through 4 p.m.

Guide Dogs for the Blind’s Vice President of Outreach Theresa Stern was thrilled with the joint venture, telling the Business Journal the nonprofit is “super excited” about the opportunity.

“There’s no question that most of our clients currently find themselves in a time of uncertainty,” Stern said. “We felt this was the perfect time for us to lead the way for blindness organizations to leverage technology to ensure that services are delivered to clients and applicants who are blind or visually impaired as efficiently as possible.”

On the first day of the partnership, Guide Dogs for the Blind users placed nine calls into the service to receive assistance.

More than 7 million Americans (almost 800,000 Californians) are visually impaired, according to 2016 statistics from the National Federation of the Blind.

The Baltimore-based organization’s findings revealed the statistic is split almost evenly between men and women ages 16 and up. But by race, the level of blindness in certain populations disproportionately affects Hispanics and Black people at 1.25 million and 1.21 million, respectively.