Be My Eyes, the accessibility app for mobile devices that puts blind and low-vision people on a live video call with a sighted guide, will help Microsoft train its AI. Be My Eyes will provide anonymized video data to improve scene understanding in Microsoft's accessibility-focused AI models. The data sets Be My Eyes gives Microsoft will include "unique objects, lighting and framing that realistically represents the lived experience of the blind and low vision community." The goal is to make Microsoft's AI more inclusive for people with vision disabilities. The companies say all personal info has been scrubbed from the metadata.

Hilton has teamed up with Be My Eyes to make hotel stays more accessible for blind and low-vision guests. The free app links users with sighted volunteers and companies who can help them navigate spaces and complete tasks using video calls. By going to the app's service directory, selecting the "hotels" option then the name of the Hilton brand they're staying at, Be My Eyes users will be connected to dedicated teams at the chain. Hilton staff members can talk users through actions such as finding and adjusting the thermostat in the room, making coffee, adjusting window coverings and moving to different areas of the hotel. The partnership covers brands including Waldorf Astoria, Conrad, DoubleTree by Hilton and Hampton by Hilton, though only in the US and Canada for now.

The internet can be a difficult place to navigate for people who are blind or who have low vision. A large portion of content on the internet is visual, and unless website creators use alt text to label their images, it's hard for users of screen readers or Braille displays to know what they show. To address the issue, Google has announced a new feature for Chrome which will use machine learning to recognize images and offer text descriptions of what they show. It is based on the same technology which lets users search for images by keyword, and the description of the image is auto-generated. "The unfortunate state right now is that there are still millions and millions of unlabeled images across the web," said Laura Allen, a senior program manager on the Chrome accessibility team.