AI Emerges as a Powerful Ally for Assistive Technologies

The World Health Organization projects that by 2050, 3.5 billion people worldwide will be using some form of assistive technology, tools that help people with disabilities or age-related limitations complete tasks that might otherwise be difficult or impossible. One major focus of assistive technology is vision loss—for people facing it, everyday activities such as cooking, dressing, or shopping can be challenging in ways many sighted people rarely consider. Even tasks often taken for granted—such as finding a small object on the floor—can be frustrating, time-consuming, difficult, or frightening for someone who cannot see.

My journey researching and writing about assistive technologies began more than 20 years ago, when a friend’s world slowly went dark. She attended a boot camp for the blind and developed various coping strategies, like putting a rubber band around the shampoo bottle to distinguish it. Back in the early 2000s, new technology emerged to help—barcode scanners so users could tell what was in the cupboard, bill readers for handling money, or voice-driven bathroom scales. But as my friend pointed out, advanced tools to help visually impaired people live their lives could be prohibitively expensive. AI is changing that.

Incremental Progress

Progress with assistive tech has historically been slow. Braille was first introduced in 1824; it is often considered visually impaired people’s first assistive technology. White canes for navigation were introduced in 1921, and talking books, in the form of slow-speed vinyl records, appeared in the 1930s. Screen readers that convert text to speech were introduced in the 1970s, and optical character readers in the 1990s. The early 2000s brought the devices cited above, along with, eventually, smartphones and wearables. Innovation and adoption gradually increased, as did affordability.

The most significant innovations, however, coincided with advances in large language models (LLMs), generative AI, and agentic AI across all industries. These advances can level the playing field for visually impaired people at home and at work.

Be My Eyes

The transition from conversational to agentic AI has supercharged the capabilities of self-service applications and agents alike in key vertical markets, and it has done the same for the assistive community. A case in point is Be My Eyes, a nonprofit launched in 2015. Be My Eyes is a mobile app with a distinctive “ring tone” that alerts volunteers so they can quickly answer a call and assist users with countless tasks. The user simply points their phone’s camera at the area or item they need help with, and the volunteer serves as their eyes. Everything is anonymous, protecting the privacy of both the caller and the volunteer. In my years as a volunteer, I’ve helped people with myriad tasks, including matching outfits, locating a dropped earring, reading a Christmas card, and verifying whether the person in the backyard is welcome.

Recent advances in AI have led Be My Eyes to add two new components to the app, in particular an AI-powered visual assistant, Be My AI. Just as contact center AI assistants are reducing the number of calls and enabling agents to handle more complex interactions, AI is reducing mundane tasks for call-side volunteers, enabling more interesting, emotionally nuanced interactions, while greatly increasing user self-reliance. Be My AI does so by providing users with detailed image descriptions, such as describing refrigerator items, including checking expiration dates; reading menus; or identifying their Uber or Lyft. This function also broadens awareness. While most of us walk into a room and think “This place is a mess” or “That is a really pretty view,” sight-impaired people cannot—until now.

These expanded capabilities help users, particularly those who’ve gradually lost sight, better interact with the world around them. In my friend's case, she’d been living in her studio apartment when she lost her vision; she had it memorized and never wanted to leave. With these additions, a similarly situated person could move and receive ongoing, detailed descriptions of the new place and surrounding areas. And the app can compare images over time, which allows users to “see” how people, places, and things change; they can, in effect, watch their children grow up or see their friends’ clothing tastes evolve.

But rather than seeing volunteer calls decline, Be My Eyes has reported that call volume has increased significantly since the AI feature was introduced. Taking care of the quick, simple things that frustrate users throughout the day is a life-changing improvement. Yet the app still provides stellar support for more complex, and rewarding, interactions.

Nancy Jamison is founder and principal analyst at Jamison Consulting LLC, bringing over 40 years of experience in contact centers and customer experience. She has worked at ROLM, Gartner, Jamison Consulting (1.0), and most recently Frost & Sullivan as a senior industry director in ICT with a specialty in the retail and healthcare sectors.