When Karen Morad, a 16-year-old schoolgirl from Cairo, went on a Kenyan safari in June 2026, she experienced something she thought was impossible: “seeing” the animals around her despite being completely blind. That moment was made possible by ScribeMe, an AI-powered app created by her older brother, Mark, also blind, which turns a phone’s camera, or Meta smart glasses, into a real-time audio narrator of the world. This story, first reported by Reuters, shows how personal struggle, self-taught coding, and assistive AI can combine to give thousands of visually impaired people a new kind of independence.From personal loss to a global accessibility toolMark Morad (also referred to as Mark Sedky in a report by Enterprise.com) began losing his vision in 2018 due to a rare, incurable optic nerve condition; by late 2021, both he and his sister Karen were completely blind. In school, Mark hit a wall: the screen readers he relied on would go silent when faced with charts, diagrams, and equations in physics and chemistry, leaving him dependent on others to interpret visual material. After reaching out to overseas developers with no response, he taught himself to code using YouTube tutorials and, by 2023, had a working prototype.What began as a tool to “read” academic visuals evolved into ScribeMe, an app designed especially for people who are totally blind. Recognition followed: Mark won awards in technology competitions, including the Vodafone AI Assistive Tools Hackathon in 2024, which helped bring in a co-founder and expand the app beyond document scanning. Today, ScribeMe is used by thousands of people across 140 countries and supports around 20 languages, including Arabic—a gap Mark says he found in every competing tool.How ScribeMe “describes” the world in real timeScribeMe uses AI and computer vision to analyze what a camera sees and then narrates it aloud. For users like Karen, that means hearing a running commentary on details such as what objects or animals are present, how far away they are, and what they’re doing, enough to mentally reconstruct the scene and sense the atmosphere. On her Kenya trip, Karen used the app through Meta smart glasses, which freed her hands to hold a cane while still receiving continuous audio descriptions of the safari.Beyond environmental descriptions, the app answers real-time questions through the phone’s camera and offers optical character recognition in more than 50 languages for reading documents and presentations. In daily life, Karen uses ScribeMe to find her classroom, recognize shops, choose outfits, and study more independently. The integration with Meta’s wearable glasses is particularly powerful for mobility, allowing blind users to navigate while keeping one hand available for a cane or other support.Pricing, platforms, and why language mattersScribeMe is available as a free download on iPhone and Android, with additional features unlocked via a fixed subscription of $20 a month or $200 a year. The annual plan effectively reduces the monthly cost to about $16.67 when paid upfront, according to reporting on the app’s pricing. Its multilingual support, around 20 languages, including Arabic, addresses a long-standing accessibility gap for non-English speakers who rely on audio descriptions to interact with digital and physical environments.For families like the Morads, the impact goes beyond features and pricing. Their father, Morad Sedky, has said that if someone had told him four years ago where his children would be today, he would have laughed it off. “Dreams grow, they grow, and we, as a family, stopped saying anything is impossible,” he added; a sentiment that now echoes across the 140 countries where ScribeMe is helping blind users “see” the world through sound.With inputs from Reuters
