#19: Seeing the world together
A Q&A with Be My Eyes VP, Will Butler
Pass It On is a bi-weekly newsletter bringing the tech and non-profit sectors closer together through knowledge sharing, written and edited by Lauren Crichton.
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Hello!
We’re crossing continents for this week’s Q&A with LA-based Will Butler, VP of Community at Be My Eyes.
Be My Eyes enables people who are blind and low-vision to identify objects by pairing them with volunteers from around the world using their camera. The app supports more than 300,000 blind and low-vision users and more than 4.9 million volunteers, across 150+ countries and 180+ languages. Consequently, Be My Eyes is the largest community of blind and low vision people worldwide.
I first heard about Be My Eyes from past Q&A guest Judith Potts and was itching to feature them on Pass It On. When I contacted Will in June, it was a particularly busy time as the team had just won an Apple Design Award—the ultimate accolade for any app-making company—in the social impact category.
Fortunately for us, Will graciously accepted my request to learn more about the startup's origins and its impressive rise to success.
Before we dive into the Q&A, a quick note on inclusive terminology. While UK sight-loss charities prefer the term partially-sighted, that’s not the case in the US. As such, this newsletter uses a mixture of partially-sighted and low-vision on Will’s request.
Now, over to Will!
👁️ Helping people see the world together - with Will Butler
How exactly does the Be My Eyes app work, and where did the idea for it originally come from?
Be My Eyes is a free app for iOS and Android devices that connects blind and partially-sighted users to a network of sighted volunteers and partner companies. If a blind/low-vision user requires sighted assistance with something, they can initiate a call to a volunteer or a partner company through the Be My Eyes app. Through the caller's camera feed, the volunteer or company rep can provide visual assistance in whatever the caller needs.
The idea for Be My Eyes (BME) came about in 2012. Our founder, Hans Jørgen Wiberg, who's visually impaired himself, was working as a consultant for the Danish Blind Association at the time. Through his work, he met many blind individuals who told him about how they used video call services, like Facetime and Skype, to call friends and family members if they needed sighted assistance. Hans Jørgen loved the idea of utilising video call technology for remote visual assistance but saw a flaw in how the blind individual always had to call a specific person. He believed that it would be possible to build a network of volunteers to answer these calls instead. And he was right!
You've been VP of Community at Be My Eyes since 2019. What drew you to the mission?
I met the BME team shortly after they launched the app in 2015. Back then, I was working at the LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired in San Francisco, and Christian (BME CEO and co-founder) came to us for guidance on working with the blind community in the United States and abroad. The curiosity and humility of the BME team shone through straight away. As a legally blind person myself (since age 19), I was particularly fascinated by how BME was bridging gaps between blind and sighted individuals. So when Christian invited me to join the team in 2019, I couldn't refuse! It's truly a dream job to work with the global blind community every day. I can't think of a better use of my time or a better team to have joined.
When Be My Eyes launched, more than 10,000 volunteers signed up within the first 24 hours. Today it has over 4.8 million volunteers, the largest community of blind and partially-sighted people worldwide. How have you managed to grow and nurture such a large community in just six years?
The answer is very simple: we make it incredibly easy for people to help others and make a difference. By volunteering for BME, you don't have to spend a lot of time or donate money; you can just pick up a call completely on your terms. It's what we call micro-volunteering—many small actions that together make up a global impact.
In many ways, the community grows and nurtures itself: our biggest source of growth comes from word of mouth on social media. That said, fostering the community still takes a lot of work. We want everyone to feel like they're part of something, so we always try to stay active on social media, answer people's messages, and share the stories and experiences of different members. Beyond the volunteer community, we've been very fortunate to have prominent media outlets such as the Guardian and Tech Crunch identify with our story and what we do, wanting to help spread the word.
Your CCO, Alexander Hauerslev Jensen, recently said that one of the greatest advantages of the Be My Eyes community is how it spreads knowledge about the ways in which the world can be more accessible for everyone. How exactly does the knowledge spread?
The knowledge spreads in two key ways: via empathy and direct feedback.
When sighted people sign up as volunteers, they experience firsthand what it's like to live with blindness or low vision and encounter access issues on a daily basis. The more volunteers we have, the more we can educate and raise awareness of accessibility issues among the general public.
When companies use BME to offer accessible partner support, they receive direct feedback on how their products and services work from an accessibility standpoint. These companies can then use that feedback to make their existing solutions more accessible and/or design new solutions with accessibility in mind.
How does the Be My Eyes product team approach inclusive design? And what advice would you give to teams looking to establish the practice?
In short, we follow the guidelines! I think there's a misconception that inclusive design requires some kind of special expertise or team. There are very clear guidelines out there for designing accessible apps, from WCAG to the third-party developer standards from Apple, Google, and Microsoft.
Beyond following guidelines, always test your designs with real users. Take their feedback seriously, and don't be afraid to get something wrong. Remediating an inaccessible product can be a daunting task, but you can avoid those surprises and headaches by making accessibility a standard part of the development process.
You mentioned earlier that companies benefit from Be My Eyes by receiving product feedback. What other ways can companies benefit from your services?
With Be My Eyes Careers and Be My Eyes for Work, we want to support companies in attracting, hiring, and retaining visually impaired candidates. We do that in two key ways. Firstly, we highlight their organisation as an inclusive employer. Secondly, we help them support visually impaired applicants and employees by giving them a direct way to connect with employers and colleagues.
We provide these services because people with disabilities still experience massive discrimination on the job market. Not only do employers tend to have preconceptions about what candidates with disabilities are or aren't capable of, they're also likely to fixate on the accommodations they would have to make if they hired a person with a disability. Consequently, many employers overlook the unique perspectives and talents of these candidates. In doing so, they're missing out.
Be My Eyes is a blend of tech and non-profit expertise. What are the advantages of having these two perspectives under the same roof? And what have you learned from each other along the way?
In general, I believe that approaching tech with a non-profit mindset can lead to incredible results. Think about curb ramps, the computer keyboard, or many other inventions that came about with "the disabled" in mind. Everyone uses those today. That's the beautiful thing about designing for the edge case: you build a product that works splendidly for everyone. That's what good technology does, in my opinion; it takes into account everyone's needs.
For Be My Eyes specifically, our non-profit expertise has been influential in so many ways—impacting everything from branding to copy to digital accessibility and so much more. I can't even list all the ways!
In your view, how can the tech and non-profit sectors come closer together?
Investment is definitely one way that tech and non-profits can come closer together, and it can work in both directions. Be My Eyes is a tech company, and we've had non-profit investors championing us since the very beginning!
Another way to bring the sectors closer together is through more direct collaboration. For example, most tech companies don't realise that even though non-profits are tax-exempt charities, you can still hire them as a resource or service vendor. In doing so, you'd be supporting a good course while learning directly from mission-driven organisations that can help you better understand the communities you serve.
Which three books or other media have had the most significant impact on you and why?
The GaryVee Audio Experience is a great daily dose of motivation for anyone running a company or managing a team.
Helping by Edgar Schein provides a fascinating behavioural economics take on why and how human beings help each other.
Be My Eyes: Hans Jørgen Wiberg at TEDxCopenhagen is the talk that started it all for us back in 2012. It's incredible to see this idea, almost ten years old, now powered by 5 million people. For that, we're immensely grateful.
Thank you, Will 🙏
I've just downloaded the Be My Eyes app and registered as a volunteer. Will you join me?
I'm taking a short break during August, so look out for the next Pass It On issue on Sept 1.
See you in a month!
Lauren 👋