Blind Russians lose access to accessibility app Be My Eyes as Internet restrictions tighten

Since mid-December, the app Be My Eyes — designed to assist blind and visually-impaired people — has been barely functional in much of Russia. Some users suspected the service had been blocked. Roskomnadzor, Russia’s federal censorship agency, claims that isn’t the case.

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Be My Eyes confirmed to Meduza that the app is indeed experiencing accessibility problems inside Russia. “As with many software companies, we rely on a number of underlying technology suppliers in order to provide our services,” the company said. “We believe that some of those service providers have been blocked from providing their services within Russia, which has a knock-on effect for us providing ours. We do apologize for this, but until and unless this changes, our services may not be available within Russia.”

Be My Eyes connects blind and visually-impaired users with sighted volunteers who can assist over live video with tasks that require vision — such as reading instructions, identifying objects, or describing appearances. The app also includes an AI assistant that generates spoken image descriptions and can answer questions.

In some Russian regions, the app doesn’t work at all, while in others, it still functions normally. The same is true for many other online services. FaceTime was blocked on December 4, while WhatsApp and Telegram are now “partially restricted” — in practice, that means the functioning of these apps has been throttled so severely that calls are no longer possible.

As of 2022, Russia had roughly 3,000 blind or visually-impaired users of Be My Eyes and around 35,000 Russian-speaking volunteers. A petition on Change.org is calling on Russian authorities to ensure access to the app. “We, blind and visually impaired people, along with our friends, families, and all concerned citizens, demand that Be My Eyes be added to the white list and not blocked, because it provides essential, high-quality assistance whenever it’s needed,” the petition reads. Russia’s white list is a list of Kremlin-approved sites and essential services kept online even when the rest of the mobile Internet is cut off.

Cover photo: Reshetnikov_art / Shutterstock.com