A non-profit organization in Denmark has created a new smartphone app with the purpose of helping blind people do things they would normally need someone else to help them with.
The app, called Be My Eyes, works when blind users run their fingers over their phone and uses the phone's camera and microphone to instantly connect users to volunteers who can see, according to CBS News.
A 50-year-old furniture maker in Denmark came up with the idea for Be My Eyes after he started losing his vision.
The Be My Eyes website says the app can come in handy for a variety of challenges blind people may have, such as figuring out the expiration date on milk and moving through new surroundings.
The app also comes with a button that volunteers can press whenever they're busy to contact another volunteer to help the blind users, CBS News reported.
Forty five-year-old Julian Vargas, who has been blind for most of his life, is among those who have used Be My Eyes. In a demonstration, he went into a local pharmacy and used the app to call volunteer Elvira Medina, who asked him what she could help him with. Vargas asked Medina if she could help him find something he needs in aisles he hadn't been in before, and Medina was able to navigate him through the store as he pointed the phone's camera in front of him.
Vargas said volunteers are giving people with vision problems "something that we need the most at that given second- a pair of eyes."
Medina has been helping blind people with small tasks since the app's launch in January, such as finding medicine, figuring out expiration dates and learning about art, CBS NEWS reported.
"Just someone curious walking the hall, touching a frame and wondering what the picture is," she said. "A guy called me up to see how his sunglasses looked, one day. So I told him he looked great and he rocked them. So, it's small things like that."
Be My Eyes is available now in 80 languages and has so far seen enrollment from 10,000 people with vision problems and 115,000 volunteers.
