Popular global transportation app Moovit has partnered with Be My Eyes, an app service providing sighted assistance to visually impaired people, aiming to make transit easier for users with sight loss.
Moovit, which is used by over 120 million people in 80 countries and claims to be ‘the world’s number one transit app’, helps people move around cities by providing users with transport information, such as bus and train trackers and real-time updates. Be My Eyes connects visually impaired users with sighted volunteers to answer queries through a video call– for example, checking the sell-by date on food packaging. The service is used by over 60,000 people with sight loss and has over 876,000 sighted volunteers.
The partnership means that anyone using Moovit can now navigate to Be My Eyes through a new menu command, so that users can combine the two services. For example, someone with sight loss who is using Moovit to find out bus arrival times can then switch to Be My Eyes to help them get on the correct bus and find a seat once on-board.
After working with a blind developer, Adi Kushnir, to make the service more accessible for visually impaired users, all Moovit screens were made compatible with Apple’s VoiceOver and Android’s TalkBack features in 2016.
In a separate collaboration, Be My Eyes has also teamed up with Microsoft, to offer users access to the Microsoft Disability Answer Desk for technology-related queries. The latest update of the app features an additional ‘Specialized Help’ menu that takes users directly to the Disability Answer Desk, where they can ask a dedicated team for assistance with Microsoft services and products.
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