Be My Eyes Amongst App Store Awards Finalists

In a post on its Newsroom site, Apple on Wednesday announced the 45 finalists for this year’s App Store Awards. The honorees span a slew of categories, as well as Apple’s panoply of platforms, and accessibility is recognized in the Cultural Impact section.

“Each year, the App Store Awards celebrate developers from around the world whose apps are improving people’s lives, and exemplify the very best in technical innovation, user experience, and design,” Apple said. “In the coming weeks, App Store Award winners will be announced, selected from this year’s distinguished group of finalists.”

Amongst the finalists in the aforementioned Cultural Impact category include accessible puzzle game Art of Fauna, Is This Seat Taken? for engendering empathy and inclusivity, and, most notably to me, Be My Eyes. I’ve covered Be My Eyes extensively over the last few years, writing stories on the company’s partnerships with the likes of Meta and Microsoft as well as interviews with Be My Eyes CEO Mike Buckley, who’s based here in San Francisco. The app connects Blind and low vision people to sighted volunteers, the latter of which assists users in identifying real world information such as expiration dates on food labels, printed instructions, signage, and much more. I last interviewed Buckley in August of last year following Be My Eyes’ acquisition of popular Apple community website AppleVis, telling me the two entities hold “shared values” and a shared mission, emphasizing the notion that there was “too much value and utility” of AppleVis to the Blind and low vision community to simply go away forever.

The App Store winners will be announced “in the coming weeks,” according to Apple.