by Joe Lonergan
Many of you may be familiar with the popular Be My Eyes app that is available on smartphones like iPhone and Android phones. If you don’t already know, Be My Eyes is an app that uses live video calls to connect you to sighted volunteers all over the world. Once connected the sighted volunteer can help you with many tasks and be your eyes through a short video call.
We have spoken about Be My Eyes before and its many use cases, from helping to read a greeting card to finding out a date on a food product, checking the colour of a clothing item, finding something on the floor, and more. These tasks can be done with the regular Be My Eyes volunteers, but sometimes you may need some specialised help. For this Be My Eyes introduced a link in their app called Browse Specialised Help, which is split into sections such as personal health, assistive technology, blindness organisations, careers, and technical.
To connect with Sky Ireland, do the following:
- Open the Be My Eyes app.
- Choose Specialized Help on the home page of the app, select “technical”, and select Sky to open their profile. From here, you can start a call and get connected with one of the Sky Ireland agents.
Note, the first time you tap on Sky you will have to agree to terms and conditions.
So, the next time you come across that silent screen when you go to a channel that looks for your pin because of parental control, you can double-check what is going on with the Be My Eyes app and, of course, there are other things you can get assistance with such as turning on voice guidance, high contrast, or audio description are other accessibility options offered by Sky.
Sky also offers voice control by pressing the voice control button on your remote, or if you are the owner of a Sky Glass TV you can say Hello Sky for hands-free voice control.
And more good news for vision-impaired Sky customers, Voice Guidance is now available on Sky Glass, and will be on Sky Stream when it launches in Ireland.
We asked Sky for a comment on their new service, and we got the following:
“Sky has always been a champion of inclusivity and we always strive to ensure that all of our customers’ needs are met. We’re incredibly proud to be the first telecommunications company in Ireland to integrate the Be My Eyes app into our customer service offering and provide essential assistance to all Sky customers. Be My Eyes means we can now offer specialised assistance and technical support to visually impaired customers when they need it, through live video calls.
Our advisors can help with technical support, help or troubleshooting for any of your Sky TV, broadband or phone products and services.
Customers have already used the service for example to help resolve connectivity issues, find settings on the TV, and learn the buttons on their remote control.
Where assistance from a friend, family member or engineer may once have been needed, visually impaired customers themselves are now empowered.”
David Nason, CX Accessibility Manager, Sky Ireland
A link to Sky’s accessibility website, where people can find out about Voice Guidance, the screen reader on Sky TV, and more: