Blind Cairo Schoolgirl Experiences Safari Through Brother’s AI App
Karen Morad went blind five years ago. Yet, during a holiday in Kenya in June, the 16-year-old Cairo schoolgirl felt as though she could see again, thanks to an app developed by her brother that describes scenes through audiovisual technology.
Using the AI-assisted app through Meta glasses, Karen received a running commentary on the animals around her, including their distance and movements. As a result, she could build a detailed picture in her mind and experience the atmosphere of the safari.
“I always thought this would be impossible to happen – but it did and I could truly see,” she said.
The app, called ScribeMe, is designed particularly for people who are totally blind. It is now used by thousands of people across 140 countries.
ScribeMe can be downloaded on iPhones and Android phones, as well as used through Meta glasses. Karen’s brother, Mark, 20, developed the app. He is also blind.
A Journey From Vision Loss to Coding
Mark began experiencing problems with his vision in 2018. Tests in Egypt and abroad found no definitive cause. However, doctors warned that he would eventually lose his sight because of a rare, incurable optic nerve condition, although they could not say when that would happen.
By late 2021, both siblings were completely blind. Karen lost her sight within six months, while Mark’s decline took nearly three years.
Their mother, Marian Maurice, was left in shock and had little guidance about how to help them. Each day, she used errands as a pretext to leave the house and cry before returning to their home in Cairo’s Manial area.
Education soon became one of the family’s biggest challenges. Mark struggled with physics and chemistry because the screen-reading apps he relied on became silent when faced with charts, diagrams and equations.
He contacted app developers abroad who were working on similar problems, but none responded. Therefore, he taught himself to code using YouTube tutorials. By 2023, he had developed a working app.
ScribeMe Expands Beyond Documents
Recognition in technology competitions helped Mark take the project further. In 2024, ScribeMe won recognition at the Vodafone AI Assistive Tools Hackathon, a Vodafone Egypt initiative aimed at providing tools for people with disabilities.
The recognition brought in a co-founder and helped expand ScribeMe beyond document scanning.
The app now answers questions in real time through a phone’s camera and supports 20 languages, including Arabic. Mark said the Arabic-language capability was missing from every competing tool he had found.
ScribeMe has also been integrated with Meta’s smart glasses. This allows blind users to keep their hands free to hold a cane while receiving descriptions of what is around them.
The app is available to download for free. Additional features are offered through a fixed subscription costing $20 a month or $200 a year.
An App That Helps Karen Every Day
For Karen, ScribeMe has become useful in many parts of daily life. It helps her find her classroom, recognise shops, choose clothes and study.
The technology also gave her a new way to experience the Kenyan safari. Through the descriptions delivered by the app, she could understand where animals were, how far away they were and what they were doing.
Her experience reflects how far the family has come since both siblings lost their sight.
“If someone told me four years ago that your son and daughter would be where they are today, I would have laughed it off,” Karen’s father, Morad Sedky, said.
“Dreams grow, they grow, and we, as a family, stopped saying anything is impossible.”
With inputs from Reuters
