You're listening to a Community Story from Be My Eyes. So my name is Scott Jopry. I am from New Hampshire, and I was born with retinopathy prematurely. 

So I do accessibility technology. So I test out technology for the blind and low vision community, and I also do YouTube. I use Be My Eyes pretty much every day, right? So I downloaded it in 2023, and I'm like, huh, this is an interesting thing. 

Let me try it. I never actually got to it. I just kind of had it on my phone, and I'm just like, huh, interesting. 

Okay. But I think I made like one or two calls. And then I found out that Be My Eyes partnered with Meta, and I'm like, wow, this is like next level, right? With Be My Eyes on the classes, it limits that hands, you know, moving around and stuff. 

You just slightly move your head, right? So I would use Be My Eyes to read things, whether it's hands, right? So hands in my fridge, or I would use Be My Eyes to describe, like, I have people describe things to me, right? And then, you know, there's some other ones, like doing fun things, like adjusting the color on my light sword, or playing video games. This is what Be My Eyes is, and I think that's like the coolest thing to do, because I don't know, I just like, well, it's hands-free now, right? Might as well jump into that, right? You know, why not give it a try? See if someone wants to join in on that. And it makes funny, it makes funny, like, conversations, too, because they don't, some of them don't even know what game I'm playing. 

And they're like, I don't know what you're doing, but sure, let's go with it. I would play Call of Duty Warzone Mobile, and essentially how this would work is I would attempt to navigate through the menu, like, I would call the volunteer, say, hey, can you help me navigate to the game modes, tell me what there is, and they're like, okay, it's on multiplayer, or it's on battle royale, and then they'd help me guide my finger to the start button, and then once the match starts, I'd say, hey, so this is the object of the game, and the whole idea is to stay alive, last person standing wins, you're supposed to, you know, basically shoot each other, really, and you're supposed to avoid a storm, right, like a storm sickness type of thing. And basically, each round, it, you know, gets smaller and smaller, and, you know, I explain that to them, and I say, just tell me if there's an enemy in front of me, if I'm walking in the right direction, if I'm walking into a wall, if I'm pointing up at the sky, because there are times I do that, and there's sometimes I'm pointing at the ground. 

It's pretty interesting, too, because, you know, so there's times I use my Xbox controller, and it's a lot worse for me, because I don't, you can't see how fast my character's going, right? I get a little more control when I have my hands on the iPad, and, you know, I already have the muscle memory of playing mobile games, like, you know, like Fortnite, when I had Sight, so I had an idea of what to do, and there was auto-fire, too, so that was very, very helpful, plus things I needed to press, I just literally just needed to aim my character right, and that's the whole object of the game, and it's super fun, it's super, super fun, really, and it comes, it makes people come together, really, it makes fun conversations, too, you know, having the hands free of, you know, the glasses on your head, and having the, you know, pad wet in front of you, or a phone in front of you, and them being able to see what you're doing, I think is very helpful, and on a side note, too, you know, something else I love about the Metaglasses, besides the whole game experiences, now that, you know, this whole, you know, be my eyes coming into the glasses, I can actually have the volunteer see things on my phone, and help me with, like, turning on, like, my settings and stuff, I think it's really cool that you can do that now, it's, like, you just unlock your phone, and you go into the main home screen, and you can scroll through your apps and stuff, and they can see through the glasses, you know, there's always someone that can help you, right, so even if you are struggling through the app, you could always email, you know, the Be My Eyes support team and say, hey, I just got this app, like, how do I do it, and I'm sure, you know, you guys will provide the link to your websites, but there's also, like, an email in the app, and that is super helpful for many different things, if you are stuck on something, if you're unsure where something is, that they can help you, you can check out their channel, another thing, too, is, like, the whole experience with a volunteer, the conversations are great, because of how they treat you, right, and, you know, there are times where I'm on a call, and I am just doing one simple task, but then I'm on there for, like, 15, 20 minutes, sometimes, like, an hour just chatting with the volunteers, and, like, getting to know them, and, you know, the good thing about this, too, is, like, with the whole Be My Eyes groups thing, you know, you can say, hey, can I have your contact info, I'm going to send you, like, I would love to connect with you again, and you can provide, like, links to the Be My Eyes groups, like, share that link over to them on, like, Instagram, or Messenger, or WhatsApp, just so that, you know, you have that volunteer you welcome to talk to, right, and I actually do have a couple of volunteers that are personal volunteers that help me out within the group system, because I just really love talking to them, they're super funny, like, I know there's other companies that do this similar thing, but, I mean, you have to pay a lot of money, right, and something that's good about Be My Eyes and the whole groups feature is, say, if you had sensitive information, right, and you have, like, a family member join through the groups, right, they can help you through that group thing, or, you know, if you have a trusted friend that can help you through that, right, it's not just, oh, I'm going to call a random volunteer, and oh, this is a different volunteer this time, okay, like, you can just call the same person, which is super, super nice, you know, and I really, I really love that, you know, you can talk to the groups, you know, like, specific people that you have assigned in the groups for help, you know, on more sensitive things, you know, for anyone that's out there that may be struggling, you know, don't be afraid to reach out, I know Be My Eyes is just an example of this, but there's tons of different resources you can go to, there's always someone there to help you, right, if you're struggling, whether it's, like, mood, and, you know, feeling down, you can reach out to a friend, or reach out to, like, a family member, right, or it's as simple as, you know, going on to Be My Eyes, and say, if you just call a volunteer and say, hey, I don't need help with anything, but I just want to chat, right, you can do that, right, there's always someone there to help you, and Be My Eyes is just one of those examples that are great, you know. Thank you for listening to this community story from Be My Eyes. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel, download our app, or visit BeMyEyes.com for more.