A Journey of Resilience

Arthur Sendas was born in Arapiraca, in the rural interior of Alagoas, with acromatopsia — a condition that causes color blindness, low vision, and migraine attacks that could leave him seeing only blurry shapes for days. "I can't see depth; it's as if everything were 2D. If there's a hole in the middle of the street, I won't see it," Arthur explains.

His childhood was hard. The son of a teacher and an agricultural technician, Arthur grew up in a middle-class family until his father's addiction to alcohol and gambling took everything away. At 13, the family lost their house and cars and sank into debt, moving to a place with no doors and no plaster, where water was scarce and the rain soaked the beds.

It was also at 13 that Arthur started his first business: selling CDs in downtown Arapiraca to pay for school, the internet, and to help at home. The computer and the books left over from his old life became his refuge — and it was there that he taught himself to program.

Later, during his technology degree, he turned that passion into purpose: his final project was a game for blind people, played through voice commands and sound cues. That planted the seed of what would become the See U App.

In 2009, Arthur met Sérgio Gomes Júnior, a classmate who had a degenerative disease and knew he would go blind. On the first day of class, Júnior said he had chosen that course to one day build a solution that would be his eyes. That day, the two became best friends — with a promise to build those eyes together.

In 2013, with the arrival of Google Glass, Arthur imagined glasses that could detect obstacles in the way. Alongside Júnior and Jaqueline Sendas — an engineer, his girlfriend and today his wife — he built a prototype and entered the project in a startup competition in Portugal.

The acceptance came as a surprise. "I never imagined being accepted. I come from rural Alagoas, from a very humble family, so it felt very distant to me." Without the means to travel, they didn't attend the event, but the validation kept them going. The glasses evolved into necklaces, bracelets and, finally, a badge connected to an app — while Júnior was losing his sight and the urgency only grew.

Everything changed in 2019, when Arthur's mother passed away from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. "I started reflecting more on what I was doing and the reason behind things." The pandemic that followed brought the moment to focus entirely on the project.

Then came the request that changed everything. At the birthday party of Edu, a blind boy and the son of a friend, the child made his wish: to walk without a cane and see the world. "Why can only Uncle Júnior do it?"

That was the cue they needed: to turn the story of their lives into a product capable of changing the lives of millions. In 2022, the three left their jobs and officially founded the See U App. They took part in the Startup Nordeste program (Sebrae), with mentoring and a 6-month grant, and secured cloud sponsorship from Google, Microsoft and AWS.

In October 2023, the See U App launched. That same month, the group suffered a devastating blow: Sérgio Gomes Júnior passed away, a victim of Becker muscular dystrophy. "It was very hard. He was more than a partner, he was a friend."

Days before he passed, Júnior said goodbye: "We made something incredible, didn't we? I'll live on in you and in the See U App. Keep going, never stop until every blind person in the world can see." The project nearly ended there, but Arthur and Jaqueline decided to honor that promise.

Shortly after, Arthur was diagnosed with throat cancer. He lost his voice, and doctors offered no hope of recovery. He spent about a month in a coma; his return was considered practically a miracle.

During his absence, the company nearly collapsed: employees left and the app stopped being updated. But free access was kept for registered users, and Google committed to covering the server costs.

In 2024, Arthur and Jaqueline rebuilt everything from scratch and pivoted the model: from hardware (the badge) to pure software, running on any smartphone. Echolocation translates obstacles into spatial sounds, like a "synthetic sonar"; artificial intelligence reads signs and books, describes objects and suggests routes; and virtual reality lets users practice paths before walking them in the real world.

In 2025, the See U App was recognized with the eAwards Brasil, from the NTT DATA Foundation — winner among 256 projects, earning a spot in the global final. Today, there are more than 130,000 users, and the mission carries on.

“The word that defines See U App is autonomy. And autonomy is not about not needing help—everyone needs help. It’s about the joy of doing something you never thought you could.”