About
One person, some spare capacity, and a set of problems worth solving.
Why now
I am not a developer. I have ideas about things that ought to exist, and until recently that was as far as it went.
What changed is AI. Not in the abstract. Specifically, the gap between "I can see what this should do" and "I can actually build it" has narrowed enormously, and quite fast. Things that would have needed a team, or a year of learning, are now within reach of one person in the evenings.
And if you are already paying for a subscription, there is usually capacity sitting unused. It seemed a waste. Pointing it at something useful turned out to be much more satisfying than letting it expire.
That is the whole idea behind One Eyed Man Labs. It is small and it is early, but it exists, which a year ago it would not have.
What gets made
I am partially sighted, so the problems I notice tend to be the ones I keep running into, or that someone I know has described. That is a narrow way to pick projects, but it does mean each one starts from a real problem rather than an imagined one.
Not everything is an app. AudioTag turns cheap NFC tags into spoken audio labels. Some things are better answered by a shape you can print for pennies, so there are 3D models here too. Whatever fits the problem.
Alongside the making, I keep a short list of things I actually use and would recommend. A regular roundup of assistive technology news is in the works, but it is not running yet.
How I try to work
Accessible properly, not nominally
WCAG 2.1 AA on this site, full TalkBack support in the app, built in from the start rather than bolted on. Being straight about the limits though: this is one person checking their own work, which is the weakest form of accessibility testing there is. If you use a screen reader every day and something here is awkward, telling me is worth more than any checklist.
Free, and private by default
Everything is free and nothing is behind a paywall. AudioTag stores everything on your device and has no network access at all. This site sets no cookies and runs no analytics. The only personal data anywhere is an email address, and only if you hand me one for the newsletter. See the privacy policy.
Open
Code goes on GitHub under a free licence. Partly on principle, and partly so the privacy claims above can be checked rather than taken on trust.
At spare-time speed
This is an evenings-and-weekends project, so progress comes in bursts with gaps in between. If something looks abandoned it probably is not. Ask.
The name
From the old line about the one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind. It is a joke at my own expense, not a claim to see further than anyone else. "Labs" is a joke about the scale.