Smart Hong Kong call sees phones become eyes for the blind
Born visually impaired, Edward Yip entered a new world with the iPhone, and now he’s sharing that joy with others via the latest technology
Smartphones have proved a marvellous convenience, with greatly enhanced information and social access. What the average user may not realise is that for the visually impaired, they can offer access to life.
Edward Yip Bing-chiu, 47, received his first iPhone in 2010. “It became my eyes,” says Yip, who has been blind since 1997.
The accessibility offered via built-in functions and downloaded apps meant he could listen to text, navigate streets and recognise objects through verbal descriptions.
“This opened up the world for me and I wondered what else could be done to make life more accessible to others like me?”
Yip was trained as a computer programmer despite being born blind in the left eye. In his late 20s, a disease slowly took his remaining vision. He made use of the time when he still had some of his sight to learn to feel his way around, listening to the sounds of the street in his neighbourhood, sensing how buses made turns just before the stop for home.
“The queue for public rehabilitation was two years’ long, so I just taught myself Braille from audiobooks in a library for the visually impaired.”
He practised reading with Braille Tang poetry, which everyone learns by heart as kids. “It was pretty fun, actually.”
Thanks to modern technology, he could continue his work in information technology. He set up a social enterprise, Jabbok IT Solutions, which offers IT assistance for clients, while providing training and jobs to the disabled and unemployed youngsters.
When Jabbok set up shop on the mainland, it was near a school for the blind. “It was in Anqing city, Anhui province. I got to know many blind teachers and students, and I felt an urge to connect them to the colourful world out there through technology.”
When Apple released the iBeacon, which uses Bluetooth low-energy wireless technology to provide location-based information and services to iOS devices, Yip jumped at the chance to create a precise navigational system for the blind.
“With GPS, it’s accurate to about 10 metres. If you can’t see, you could be on Nathan Road in Jordan, Nathan Road in Yau Ma Tei, or not Nathan Road at all.“
The China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation has granted Yip’s Big Bulb Project, under his Jabbok Charitable Foundation, 1.5 million yuan (HK$1.8 million) to install 1,650 iBeacons along a main road in Anqing as a pilot.
These devices will send users of i-gadgets information such as that relating to shop names and products sold, restaurant menus and bus stops.
Jabbok Charitable Foundation Limited has nominated Yip for an Innovating for Good Award in the South China Morning Post’s Spirit of Hong Kong Awards.
He has tried to get Hong Kong interested in the idea. “I talked to a mall, but they bluntly said it’s not feasible. ‘How many blind people are there in Hong Kong and how many do you think will shop here?’ They asked me.”
So for now at least, Yip is focusing on Anqing. Part two of the project is to collect 500 secondhand iPhones to give to blind residents so they may enjoy the accessibility to be created for them.
He’s calling for donations of unwanted iPhones – models 5 and above – and hopes technologically up-to-date Hongkongers will exercise some generosity to help others gain access to the world they cannot see.
