RemoteAssistant.Me: Helping the Blind “See” Through the Eyes of Their Friends
As can be seen from the various .Me domains, startups cover a very wide range of industries, from entertainment and sports to technological solutions of all kinds. Today we want to introduce you to a very special one, that took the technological avhievments of the modern age and smartphone era and skip the commercial bandwagon, opting rather to be socially aware do something less lucrative, but infinitelymore rewarding- help others.
RemoteAssistant.Me is, just as its name suggest, an app that serves to help blind and vision-impaired people navigate through the world. What it basically does is use the possibilities of today’s smartphones to connect blind people with their friends, family, or a remote assistant service to help them get around and take part in daily activities most of us takes for granted.
Being able to see is the status quo for most of the world’s population, and most of the things we design and bring forth is for the seeing. Just imagine being blind and trying to do ordinary, everyday things, like catch the right bus or read a menu. These everyday tasks become next to impossible, making the simplest things in life hard.
There is a number of apps that aim to help the blind, and while they do make life a little bit easier, they tend to fall short on several levels. Tomas Stanik, the founder and the CEO of RemoteAssistant.Me noted:
There are several apps that help the blind, but they cannot replace a real live assistant. The technology is just not there yet. When you ask a blind person what helps them the most in their everyday life, the answer is- a friend.
Making the Connection
That is why this Czech startup is focused on an app that connects a blind person with a friend, family member or an assistant, who can see the video stream from the caller’s smartphone as well as the person’s position on the map, to help with anything from reading the said menu in a restaurant to helping a person navigate to the desired location.
They are basically allowing blind people to „use“ the eyes of their friends vicariously, through a smartphone, an everyday piece of tech whose possible applications we tend to oversee. But RemoteAssitant.Me did not stop at just building an app: in partnership with Czech Blind United they are launching an assistance service in June 2014, that would help the blind using the app live their everyday lives to the fullest.
The app is currently in a closed beta stage of development, and the testing is taking place locally in the Czech Republic. Even though the number of testers is limited, if you’re interested to test the app yourself, you can contact the team here and they will let you know as soon as more beta testers are needed.
Socially Aware Startups… Are possible?
It is not a simple task, to help the blind overcome everyday obstacles the rest of us rarely even thinks about, and even less so for a startup, which need make a profit, get the paychecks for the team members and make it in the competitive market. Startups are generally determined for quick growth because they tend to solve a problem, but it is usully a commercial one, not social.
Tomas Stanik stated simply. Admittedly, it is harder to make a commercially viable product, because there is a limited number of users- the usual startup math just doesn’t add up and you cannot count on the “usual” monetization tactics. It is possible, however, for a startup to be socially aware and still be able to sign the paychecks, says Stanik:
You just have to be creative, think outside the box and find alternative means and funding. You can make it work.
And the RemoteAssistant seems to be doing just that- making it work and making the world a better place.
