As his vision faded, Hans Jørgen Wiberg created Be My Eyes, an app that lets volunteers guide blind and low-vision users through live video.
Hans Jørgen Wiberg built his startup for a future he knew was coming.
Born with retinitis pigmentosa, a progressive eye disease that slowly narrows vision, Wiberg had already begun losing sight by his mid-20s. Tasks that most people handle in seconds – reading a date stamp, checking a label, adjusting a dial – were starting to require extra steps.
Over time, those small moments added up, and out of the need for a solution came an idea. In 2015, Wiberg launched Be My Eyes, an app that connects blind and low-vision people with sighted volunteers who can help them navigate everyday details.
How the Be My Eyes app works
The idea behind it was straightforward. Smartphones already had cameras and could make live video calls. In theory, that meant a blind or low-vision person could point their phone at whatever was in front of them and get immediate guidance from someone who could see it.
But while the technology was already there, the access and timing needed for efficiency were not. A normal video call required calling a family member or friend, interrupting them, and hoping they happened to answer.
Those moments when help is needed are also often small and immediate, with little to no time to wait. Be My Eyes works by removing the friction from that process.
Instead of searching for the right person to call, users now just have to tap a single button. Within seconds, they are connected to a volunteer somewhere in the world.
That volunteer is then ready to see through the camera and help interpret what is in front of them.
That kind of simplicity also carries consequences. The app asks strangers to enter intimate, everyday scenes: a kitchen counter, a medicine bottle, a utility panel. It also asks volunteers to answer without much context.
Trust, as a result, had to be designed through clear community rules. Reporting tools were built into the call flow, and consequences were integrated for abuse, including account blocks.
From thousands of early signups to millions of volunteers
When Be My Eyes launched in 2015, the early response offered a measurable signal that the premise worked. The company says that within 24 hours, 10,000 volunteers had signed up.
By 2017, The Independent reported 600,990 sighted volunteers and 45,731 blind and partially sighted users, noting that the app was often used in kitchens – precisely where small print can quietly decide whether a task is easy or exhausting.
The community continued to scale. In January 2025, Be My Eyes said it had grown to over 750,000 blind and low-vision users and 8.3 million volunteers.
Where people are using Be My Eyes in the real world
Real users continue to see real-world benefits. In a 2025 CBS News report, Be My Eyes appeared in the day-to-day of Jay Blake, a Cape Cod mechanic who had been blind since a 1997 accident.
He described a forklift wheel-and-tire assembly exploding in his face. It sent him through the air, and he later woke up after an 11-hour reconstruction surgery with two prosthetic eyes.
Blake still worked with his hands in his Marstons Mills shop and at the track. To do so, he leaned on a “controlled environment” to stay oriented. CBS noted the radio was always on, with the sound acting like a fixed point in the room.
But when a task depended on precise visual confirmation – reading a label, checking a measurement – he would open Be My Eyes and let a volunteer look through his phone camera to talk him to the answer.
“My eyes don’t work, but I know what I am looking for, so all I need is somebody’s eyes to tell me what’s there,” Blake said.
Indeed, experiences like Blake’s reveal the kind of impact that can happen when a founder builds from personal truth. And in Wiberg’s case, he took the slow loss of his own sight and turned it into a way for millions of small acts of help to reach the people who needed them.
