Full Transcription
Jeff Thompson:
Welcome to Blind Abilities. I’m Jeff Thompson and welcome to our CSUN coverage sponsored by Be My Eyes.
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If you’re blind or have low vision,
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Be My Eyes is a must have tool.
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No matter where you are
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Or what language you speak
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You can call up on-demand visual support in seconds.
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In seconds.
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From a pool of more than two million volunteers
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Two million volunteers
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And the best part is
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It’s completely free.
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It’s completely free.
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No matter how many times you use it
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No matter how much you use it
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Completely free.
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Besides the option to call volunteers
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You can also use Be My Eyes’ new feature
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Specialized Help
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To get quick, high quality
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Video custom service
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Directly from companies like Microsoft
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And Google
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All within the Be My Eyes app
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On Android
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Or iOS.
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Join the community
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Join the community
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Today
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Today.
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On the web at www.bemyeyes.com.
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Enable the Blind Abilities skill on your Amazon device just by saying enable blind abilities.
Jeff Thompson:
Welcome to Blind Abilities. I’m Jeff Thompson and on the line with me today from CSUN I got Mr. Will Butler from Be My Eyes. How you doing, Will?
Will Butler:
Great. How are you doing?
Jeff Thompson:
I’m doing good. It sounds like you guys are doing … you’ve got some big news from CSUN.
Will Butler:
Yeah. Absolutely. We’re really pleased and I’ve got two other buddies here with me.
Alexander Hauerslev Jensen:
Hi Jeff. Alexander from Be My Eyes here.
Kyndra LoCoco:
And Kyndra LoCoco from Google Accessibility.
Jeff Thompson:
First of all I want to thank you Kyndra, Will, Alexander for taking the time out of the convention and coming on and sharing this news with Blind Abilities and the listeners. Alexander, you’ve been working with Kyndra for a while on this project?
Alexander Hauersley Jensen:
Yes we have and we couldn’t be more excited about the launch yesterday where now you can call Google Accessibility through Be My Eyes as specialized help. It’s been in the works for a while. We’re so excited that we’re live now.
Jeff Thompson:
I opened up the Be My Eyes app today and there it was, right there, I could tap on it, call right in, and it said it was open too.
Kyndra LoCoco:
Beautiful, isn’t it?
Alexander Hauersley Jensen:
Now if you have any issues related to Google products or services then you can go into specialized help, click Google, and make calls directly to Google support.
Will Butler:
I think more than anything we’re just pleased to have Kyndra here with us today to talk about it from Google’s perspective and what they’re excited to be offering. We’ll hand it off to her as well but feel free to ask us any questions if you think your listeners are going to have any questions as well, Jeff.
Jeff Thompson:
Well they hear from me quite a bit. I’m sure they want to hear from Kyndra. Welcome Kyndra.
Kyndra LoCoco:
Oh, well all right then. We’re just really excited. I think I’ve told Alexander and Will this multiple times I think that what they’ve done, you know, going from this sort of idea all the way through implementation and building a community of almost two million is absolutely fabulous and I think what we’ve been trying to do on the Google Accessibility support team is really sort of work and collaborate to just support the community in general and I think that’s really exciting that partnerships like Google as well as Microsoft and Be My Eyes can come together and just work together to make this massive impact on supporting a community. ‘Cause that’s really all of our end goal is just really supporting the accessibility community and so this is just exciting that we get this direct access to this community that already exists and vice versa. This community gets direct access to Google Disability Support, so this is, I think, a great step forward for everyone involved.
Will Butler:
We used the service ourselves yesterday with a Google phone and it was amazing. Just in a couple seconds, we had a Google support person on the line. They knew exactly what to do with someone with a screen reader, helped coach us through our issue on a pixel, and it was just seamless. And in a couple minutes later we figured it out and moved on to the next thing.
Jeff Thompson:
This is really great because there’s so many students using the apps, I mean Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Hangouts, the list just keeps going on and on with Google. And this partnership between Be My Eyes and Google, you guys are creating exciting times because now you have a student that may be having trouble with a Google product or service, and they can just open up the Be My Eyes app, hit one button and poof get the help they need. And from someone who knows best. A Google Disabilities Support agent.
Alexander Hauersley Jensen:
Exactly. I think that Kyndra just touched upon it quickly in that now you have the option both to call Google and Microsoft [inaudible] through specialized help. And it’s been really really amazing to see how two industry leaders has come together to do the right thing and join forces about making accessibility a higher priority, and providing an accessible customer support. This is something we were surprised by actually, to see that what we think these two peer companies coming together and helping each other out, getting this in place so this has been an extremely pleasant journey.
Will Butler:
And maybe Kyndra can speak to this too, we believe that Be My Eyes is like a core belief … is that making a customer support accessible shouldn’t be a luxury item and just because you can see doesn’t mean that your support should be more free than somebody else’s. And so, we really deeply believe that we should provide video customer support to companies and that the user should never have to pay to get supported via video. That’s huge for us.
Kyndra LoCoco:
Absolutely.
Will Butler:
And I think it’s just … it’s cool to see that Google and Microsoft are on that same page.
Jeff Thompson:
Well Kyndra, I want to thank Google for getting involved in this, and I want to thank Be My Eyes for expanding the opportunities that people now have because you can use it any time you want and to get actual support from that company, you can’t get better than that. So that’s great news.
Kyndra LoCoco:
Absolutely.
Will Butler:
I’m curious, Kyndra, this is so new for people, it might be cool to hear a little bit about all the different ways that people could use this. There’s so many different Google products and use cases for it. I know that like-
Kyndra LoCoco:
Oh yeah.
Will Butler:
Jeff mentioned Google Docs but the list kind of goes on and on.
Kyndra LoCoco:
Oh my goodness, yeah. I think our agents, in this sense, are some of the best agents out there because they are really forced to be experienced and knowledgeable on hundreds of products ’cause we say we will-
Will Butler:
Right
Kyndra LoCoco:
… support any accessibility within any product. What we didn’t want was to give a poor customer experience where we said oh we only support accessibility in this product or, you know, whatever it might be. We were really tasked with pretty difficult problem to answer and I think that when it comes to support it’s already frustrating when you have to contact support, right? So, we want to make sure we give a really good experience here and we did a lot of training and these agents are incredibly knowledgeable on anything from YouTube, Android, G Suite products which is all those docs and sheets and drives and Gmail. And the list goes on, right? So …
Will Butler:
Wow, YouTube. That’s amazing.
Kyndra LoCoco:
Absolutely, yeah. [crosstalk] Any question if we don’t know the answer we’ll find the right team that does have it.
Jeff Thompson:
Oh that’s great. I just picture this big giant place with all these agents in there just waiting to help. When you just threw YouTube in there I just went wow. There we go. Another layer.
Will Butler:
We can’t wait to see all of like, cool connections that blind users are going to make with YouTube now, and with all the other Google products that’s just like, the sky’s the limit in terms of quality support.
Kyndra LoCoco:
I think one of the gaps that often happens too when you’re supporting someone, especially who’s blind or low vision is agents are typically trained to say do you see the green button or the blue button on your top right screen or tell me what you see here. So, there was a gap before Be My Eyes where … I go between BME and Be My Eyes … where, you know, Be My Eyes, where before we had them it was difficult to say can you navigate our tab too and so you’d have to sort of work together to really understand what the user is seeing. And now that we have this video connection and this seamless platform to use it has really streamlined the process and so not just great for customers but our agents are incredibly thrilled that they have this device now too.
Jeff Thompson:
And I think all the listeners are really going to be excited and are excited right now with this breaking news. I just want to thank all of you for doing what you’re doing for accessibility and inclusiveness. It’s really changing. You guys are part of the change that’s happening out there.
Will Butler:
Thank you, Jeff.
Kyndra LoCoco:
Thank you.
Alexander Hauersley Jensen:
Thank you so much, Jeff.
Kyndra LoCoco:
Appreciate it.
Will Butler:
And please tell your listeners as well that they can reach out to us if they feel passionate about companies coming on the platform. The thing that Google and Microsoft share in common is they want to be accompanied by other companies who want to support our community by joining our platform. Just send any requests to info@bemyeyes.com. Just call it a specialized help request and tell us what companies you want to get support from with video.
Jeff Thompson:
I’ll be sure to put that info@bemyeyes.com in the show notes, and there’s another way directly from the Be My Eyes app. You can just swipe down right below Microsoft and Google there, and put your suggestion right in when you tap on that button. Open Be My Eyes.
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Be My Eyes. Call first available volunteer button.
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Single finger swipe left to right.
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Specialized help button.
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Single finger double tap.
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Back button.
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Now single finger swipe to the right.
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Specialized help heading.
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Swipe again.
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Info button.
Jeff Thompson:
Swipe again.
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Be My Eyes Technical Support open button. Google open button. Microsoft open button. We are always aiming to grow the Be My Eyes Community. If there are other companies that you may seek assistance from and would like them to be brought on board please let us know and we will do our best to include them in the specialized help section. Make a suggestion button.
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Single finger double tap.
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New organization suggestion.
Jeff Thompson:
And let’s just open up their email, it addressed it, it put in the subject line and you just put in your suggestion and hit the send button.
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Send button.
Alexander Hauersley Jensen:
That’s a very good [inaudible], so yeah.
Kyndra LoCoco:
I’ll do a shameless plug as well if that’s okay.
Will Butler:
Absolutely.
Kyndra LoCoco:
Anyone can also go to just, g.co/disabilitysupport. Be My Eyes app to download is also in there as well as other ways you can contact the disability support team.
Jeff Thompson:
That is so cool, g.co.
Kyndra LoCoco:
Yep. g.co/disabilitysupport
Jeff Thompson:
All right. Well, Alexander, Will, Kyndra, I want to thank you all for coming on to Blind Abilities and sharing the great news, the great partnership between Google and Be My Eyes. I’m sure the listeners are all gonna enjoy this so thank you very much.
Will Butler:
[crosstalk] Thanks. Appreciate it.
Jeff Thompson:
Such a great time talking to Kyndra, Alexander and Will and hearing their passion for the commitment that they are putting forth towards inclusiveness and creating this partnership that allows us to have more access and opportunities to the specialized help at Google. Thank you Google. And Thank you Be My Eyes. And be sure to check out the Google Accessibility Support at g.co/disability support and download the Be My Eyes app from the Google Play store or the iOS app store. And a big thank you goes out to Chee Chau for his beautiful music used in the podcast and that’s @LCheeChau on Twitter. And to Stephen Letnes from Able Artist Foundation, for his beautiful music we used in the promo for Be My Eyes. You can find out more about Stephen and the Able Artist Foundation on the web at ableartist.org.
Jeff Thompson:
I want to thank you all for listening. We hope you enjoyed, and until next time, buh-bye.
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Enable the Blind Abilities skill on your Amazon device just by saying enable blind abilities.
[Music] [Transition noise] -When we share
-What we see
-Through each other’s eyes…
[Multiple voices overlapping, in unison, to form a single sentence]
…We can then begin to bridge the gap between the limited expectations, and the realities of Blind Abilities.
Jeff Thompson:
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