Travel Hands is a UK charity that pairs blind and partially sighted people in London with volunteer guides. Its volunteers have walked alongside more than 400 people on 1,500 journeys across 22 London boroughs. Each of those journeys needed a guide standing right next to the traveler. Founder Ishan Jha is working on a way for guides to help from anywhere, and he has a very personal reason to get it right.

Doctors said he might go blind. He started planning how he'd live.

In 2013, Ishan learned he had an eye disease. Doctors told him he might lose his sight as he got older.

Later, while studying for a master's degree in London, he chose a project close to home: helping blind people find work. "I wanted to do something for myself, thinking: how would I live?" he says. "And I love to work."

He then volunteered at a charity, where he saw that travel was the biggest barrier. "Every visually impaired person… had the biggest challenge of travel."

In 2020, during COVID, he started a WhatsApp group so blind people could connect and find help getting around. In three months it grew from 10 people to 300. Travel Hands ran its first guided walks on London streets in 2021 and became a registered charity in 2023.

More than a third of trip requests go unfilled

Travel Hands can say yes to 60 to 65% of the journey requests it gets. When it can't, people often stay home or pay for a taxi.

The guides help with the parts of a trip that are hardest to do alone, like the walk from your front door to the bus stop or from the station to the doctor's office. A traveler, or someone in their family, books a guide by phone, app or website.

Plenty of people want a guide. Finding enough free guides at the right time and place is the hard part. Every volunteer needs a background check and training, and then has to show up in person. Ishan is building three tools to make every trip easier to book and to staff.

The first tool decides which free volunteer is the best fit for each trip. Travel Hands built this matching system itself, then improved it through a project with the European Space Agency.

Booking a guide should be as easy as asking out loud

Using a phone without sight takes practice. Blind users rely on special settings and finger gestures, and Ishan estimates that fewer than 40% have learned them.

So Travel Hands built VIP Assistant, a voice assistant. You talk to it, and it answers questions and books a guide for you. The first version came out of J.P. Morgan Chase's Force for Good program in 2025. Travel Hands' own tech team has since rebuilt it and tested it with the people who use the service.

"It doesn't need to rely on the skill set of the person," Ishan says. "It could be an old lady who has no idea how to use a smartphone. Just chat with a VIP Assistant and book a journey."

A guide who sees the street through your glasses

The newest tool is remote help. The traveler wears smart glasses with a camera. A volunteer sees the street through that camera and talks the traveler through it, live.

Ishan describes a street crossing. "The signal is not green yet. Keep waiting. Keep waiting. Yes, now it's green. Now you can walk."

This matters for volunteers too. More than 110 people volunteer with Travel Hands, and 70% of them say they would do more trips if they could help remotely. "We give you 20 minutes to remotely assist someone from your computer," Ishan says. "It's more likely that you'll accept, because you can accommodate that."

What Ishan says he got from the AI Impact Scaling Program

Travel Hands joined Tech To The Rescue's AI Impact Scaling Program in May 2026. It came in with a working service, its own tech team and support from others, including the UK Space Agency, Macmillan Cancer Support and Community Southwark.

Ishan says the most useful parts so far are meeting the other organizations in the program and the expert talks, including sessions on using AI safely with people who may be vulnerable. "Some of the lectures are very, very helpful," he says.

In July 2026, we matched Travel Hands with tech company 26bitz. 26bitz built a first version of the video link for the smart glasses. The next step is completing it. "With 26bitz we managed to create something very quick," Ishan says. "It kind of inspired my team."

He is honest that the big results haven't arrived yet. "I think the impact will come in the next six months, definitely."

From 400 travelers to 1,000

Travel Hands wants to more than double the number of people it serves, from 400 to 1,000. Next, VIP Assistant will tell travelers what's along their route, like pharmacies, restaurants and toilets. Remote help will launch once volunteers can see the video on their end.

The solution is in a testing phase, if you would like to be in a focus group, contact Travel Hands at contact@travelhands.co.uk

The clearest sign of progress will be how many trip requests Travel Hands can say yes to. The matching system and remote help are both built to push that number up.

Tech To The Rescue is a global nonprofit that helps social impact organizations scale what already works, using technology and AI.

Are you leading an organization with a proven solution? Apply to our AI Impact Scaling program.

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