Karen Morad went blind five years ago, yet on holiday in Kenya in June, the 16-year-old Cairo schoolgirl felt like she could suddenly see again thanks to an app developed by her brother that described the safari in audiovisual.
Using the AI-assisted app inserted into Meta glasses, Karen enjoyed a running commentary on details of the animals around, their distance from her and what they were doing, giving her a full picture to imagine the scenes and sense the atmosphere.
“I always thought this would be impossible to happen – but it did and I could truly see,” she said of the app, called ScribeMe, which is designed in particular for people who are totally blind and is now being used by thousands of users across 140 countries.
It can be downloaded and inserted into iPhones and Android phones as well as Meta glasses, and was developed by Karen’s brother, Mark, 20, who is also blind.
Mark began complaining about his vision in 2018. Tests in Egypt and abroad found nothing definitive, only a warning he would eventually lose his sight to a rare, incurable optic nerve condition, with no timeline. By late 2021, both siblings were completely blind, Karen’s decline took six months and Mark’s nearly three years.
Their mother, Marian Maurice, was in shock, with no guidance on what to do. She used the pretext of errands to go away and cry each day before coming back to their home in the Manial area of Cairo.
Education was one of the family’s toughest challenges. Mark struggled with studying physics and chemistry at school, as screen-reading apps he used went silent when they tried to describe charts, diagrams, and equations.
He wrote to app developers abroad working on similar problems. None replied. So he taught himself to code from YouTube tutorials and by 2023, he already had a working app.
Winning recognition in technology competitions, including the Vodafone AI Assistive Tools Hackathon in 2024 – a Vodafone Egypt initiative to provide tools for people with disabilities – brought in a co-founder and helped expand the ScribeMe app well beyond scanning documents.
It now answers real-time questions through a phone’s camera and supports 20 languages, including Arabic, a gap Mark said he found in every competing tool. It has since integrated with Meta’s smart glasses, so that blind users’ hands are free to hold a cane. ScribeMe can be downloaded for free, with extra features available for a fixed subscription of $20 a month or $200 for a year.
For Karen, the app helps her to find her classroom, recognise shops, choose an outfit, and even study.
“If someone told me four years ago that your son and daughter would be where they are today, I would have laughed it off,” Mark’s father, Morad Sedky, said. “Dreams grow, they grow, and we, as a family, stopped saying anything is impossible.”
