93 karma · joined February 25, 2023
Another good one is Seeing AI. This one is from Microsoft, and it has all sorts of useful utilities inside it, including a way to tell how bright a room is (helps to know if you left lights on or not), a barcode scanner that gives you product info (it beeps at you faster or slower to let you know you're getting warmer), a color analyzer that kinda' works sometimes, a document reader with voice guidance to help you get the camera lined up, a currency reader, and I think a few more goodies.
Many countries also have a library service for the blind. In the United States, it's called the National Library Service for the Blind. Definitely get him setup with them, or your other country's library service. The one in the U.S. let's you download an app and download tens-of-thousands of audiobooks for free. They also have a few magazines that they record each month. It's pretty amazing, and all available from his phone. The app is called Bard Mobile in the U.S.
I happen to be blind myself, so feel free to ask anything else you would like. I've been doing this for a while, and there are several more of us here as well.
Original comment: Yeah, this wasn't always the case, until recently. People were using it to describe their kids, spouses, etc. Pissed a lot of folks off when they disabled it. I never even thought of using it for that, so now that I realize I could have, it kinda' pisses me off as well. Honestly, I never cared too much what they looked like, but it would have been interesting to hear the ChatGPT viewpoint. :)
But definitely not something I could have asked a fellow human about without it seeming really weird, and being confident I wouldn't get a biased answer. Though it's probably unrealistic to expect that the AI wouldn't also give a biased answer.
The only thing the language police have done for us is to make communication more awkward. How am I supposed to have a real conversation with anyone if they're constantly worried they're going to not use the right code words (which, by the way, change routinely). How is a blind person supposed to convince a potential employer that they can handle the work when they (according to the language police) can't even handle people using regular words. People learn by asking questions, and people aren't likely to ask questions if they are afraid of stepping on a verbal landmine and being labeled insensitive, or worse.
I don't know who the language police think they're serving by all this outrage and/or false concern, but it certainly isn't me. If I need to, I can get offended on my own behalf just fine thanks.