Aira is a service that allows blind and low-vision people to receive audio descriptions of their surroundings from a live operator. It’s like a FaceTime; you dial up the service, point your camera at your surroundings, and a person looking through it becomes your eyes. They’ll tell you what they see—reading the text of small labels or a menu, for example—to help you go about your day wherever you are.
The downside of the service is that it’s rather expensive if you aren’t currently taking advantage of a free promotional offer or referral bonus. For example, upon installing the app, I was allowed to make just one call under five minutes in length every 24 hours for free; otherwise, accessing Aira’s helpful agents will cost me a minimum of $30/month for a minute a day, and $100 for a couple of hours:
However, Aira now has a new partnership with Starbucks that will give everyone 30 minutes of free service whenever they’re at said coffee-slinging location. I haven’t had a chance to use the app myself, but my presumption is that it’ll either detect when you’re at a Starbucks location (so long as you’ve given the app access to your location settings) or, possibly, note when you’re on the Starbucks wifi.
However the identification process works, you’ll then get a full half-hour of Aira access, which should be more than enough for you to find what you’re looking for and make a purchase. I haven’t yet been able to confirm whether this is a free half-hour per day or per Starbucks visit. Suffice it to say, unless you’re one of those people who basically lives at a Starbucks during the workday, it’s unlikely you’ll need much more time than a half-hour.
The Aira app is available for both Android and iOS, and all you need to do to get started is cough up a phone number (though you can also sign up for the free tier of the service using an email address). And if you’d rather not fuss with Aira, there are plenty of other apps that can help describe what you’re looking at, including the volunteer-powered Be My Eyes (similar to Aira), TapTapSee, Google Lens, Seeing AI, Lookout, and RightHear—to name a few.
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