WeVoice+

For visually impaired users, WeVoice+ provides quick visual assistance from volunteers who are willing to offer help whenever a photo is uploaded. This provides convenience to the daily lives of the visually impaired.

The volunteer users have the satisfaction of helping people during their free time. They are not constrained by a fixed time, date or venue to perform volunteer works. With WeVoice+, they can accumulate volunteer hours anytime and anywhere.

The mobile app has two functions. (1) For a complex situation such as a street environment, users can take a picture and send it to a group of volunteers. Any available volunteers can describe the picture to the user. With a large volunteer community that has installed the app, there will always be someone available in the world to support the visually impaired users when needed. (2) The other function involves artificial intelligence for simpler tasks, where users can take a picture of an object or section of text, and after AI analysis the picture is outputted in voice form to read out the text or identify the object. These two functions are complementary; one is more suitable for a complicated situation, the other is does not require volunteers and suitable for simple or even confidential tasks.

WeVoice+ promotes the concept of helping people using technology. We want to make helping people more accessible and direct. People only need to install the app and respond to the request sent from a visually impaired user when they are free. The ease of participation in using this app will encourage and motivate them to take action and help the needy.

For visually impaired users, the photo-taking user interface has three choices – they can choose whether to use volunteer support, AI object recognition or AI text recognition. If they choose to send the picture to volunteers, the picture will appear in the volunteer user interface and a notification will be sent to volunteers. Volunteers who are available can record a voice or text message, and a notification will be sent to the visually impaired user. If the reply from the volunteer is not clear enough, the visually impaired user can record a voice message to request that the volunteer clarify his or her answer. The visually impaired user will only receive relevant notifications and volunteers will not receive notification from replies of other volunteers.

For visually impaired users, the value we provide is quick visual assistance from volunteers who are willing to help and provide convenience to their daily lives. For volunteers, we provide the satisfaction of helping people anytime, anywhere, while accumulating volunteer hours.