Close your eyes, how will it be, meeting new people? You can get so much more by hearing a person’s voice. Personality beyond pictures.
“People rely so much on vision that a lot of the world is lost to them.” (Invisible Shores by Oliver Kennett).
While it is possible to feel a personal connection with someone that we happen to meet at the grocery store, in the gym, or at a coffee house, randomly stumbling on a genuinely meaningful connection with another person is rare. Today’s technology helps improve communications with people we already know, but in what way can it help us connect with folks we do not yet know? Many apps and websites offer photos as a filter, but pictures do not reflect personality or generate deeply felt human connection.
The blind and visually impaired community understands how we can find relationships without photos, based on personality and chemistry. It’s time for the rest of us to learn. Vorail is based on the most human form of communication, our voice. After all, it is our voice that opens the window to our soul. Hear a question, speak an answer, ask a question, listen to the answers. When meeting people at a party, asking a question is the natural way to start talking. Choosing which questions to answer in a safe environment that protects privacy is a risk-free way to join the conversation. Vorail never request phone number or email, and any person who communicates in a way that makes you uncomfortable or any topic that makes you feel upset can be added to your mute bin so that communications between you and that person or topic will no longer take place. Vorail is a community where healthy and meaningful communication happens because people learn to trust one another by listening to the authenticity and sincerity that can only be expressed using the human voice. Likewise, people who are not authentic and sincere are recognized as such and subsequently muted by many in the community. Experience life through your ears, and it will add more vision to your sight. Go where eyes can’t take you.
Vorail currently is available only in the App Store for iPhones and iPads. Over 80,000 answers and questions are created and listened to each day. With your support, we can offer Vorail to the other half of the world, Android owners.
“You fall in love with the voice first, there’s so much richness and intonation within a voice that gives clues to a person’s personality” (Kevin Satizabal, Royal London Society for the Blind)
Vorail in the news:
RNIB App of the Month, May 2016 – Vorail (http://www.rnib.org.uk/blogs/technology-blog)
AppleVis Extra #43 Scott Davert and Thomas Domville talk about Vorail athttp://www.applevis.com/podcast/episodes/applevis-extra-43-interview-developers-vorail
The Tech Doctor Blog and Podcast, Robert and Allison speak with a developer and a user of the new social media app called Vorail at http://dr-carter.com/podcasts/20160509withchapters.mp3
iAccessVO Episode 15 by Ed Plumacher and Brian Fischler chat with Vorail developers athttp://traffic.libsyn.com/iaccessvo/iAccessVO-015.mp3
AppleVis podcast by Scott Davert demos Vorail athttp://www.applevis.com/podcast/episodes/get-talking-vorail-ios
Vorail principles:
No abuse. Zero tolerance towards abuse, mute bin for people & threads.
Relax and enjoy. An old Chinese saying “Apart from birth and death, nothing is a big deal in life.” (生死之外无大事) Relax, really. There is nothing to lose. To use the service, no photo/profile/phone number is required. Let the true you emerge.
Don’t give up. Some people may feel a little disoriented in the first couple of sessions, because, hey, it’s like being in the dark room. Don’t give up, you will get through it.
Vorail may be replaced by something better, and if something better is invented, that’s good for the world.