BEIJING, Oct. 16 (Xinhua) -- China's leading online lifestyle platform Meituan Dianping has launched a voice-based service to help the visually impaired order food online via speech recognition and voice interaction technologies.

Users can change the company's app into its speech recognition mode by saying certain words.

Meituan Dianping's project is part of Chinese internet firms' efforts to make life easier for the visually impaired.

Tech firms like Baidu and ByteDance have optimized their services or used their products to help the visually impaired.

Data from the China Association of the Blind showed that China has some 17 million people with visual impairment. At least 6 million of them use smartphones, an industry survey showed.