#53 Seeing AI
Seeing AI: Talking Camera for the blind.
Designed to work in conjunction with VoiceOver, Seeing AI (Artificial Intelligence) reads short text and even full documents quickly and easily. The bottom line here is reading does not have to be an insurmountable problem anymore for visually impaired people.
Here’s a link to a 50-second video showing a couple of features of this app. By the way, the app is FREE and available in the App Store of your phone.
Here’s another link with more details of the features or what they call channels.
The app harnesses the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to narrate the world around the user by describing nearby people, text, and objects. Once it is downloaded (from the App Store), the user simply points the device’s camera at another person, and it will describe them. Seeing AI can also read text aloud that appears on the screen. It can help someone who is visually impaired listen to text from a book, find grocery items on the store shelf, and much more.
The app is optimized for use with VoiceOver and helps recognize:
People – stores people’s faces so you can recognize them later. The app gives an estimate of their age, gender and emotions.
Short text – speaks text as soon as it appears in front of the camera.
Documents – gives audio guidance to capture a printed page for reading by VoiceOver.
Products – lets the user scan barcodes with the assistance of audio beeps to guide them. The name of the product, as well as package information, can be heard.
Scenes – speaks an overall description of the user’s surroundings.
Images in other apps – tap “Share” and “Recognize with Seeing AI” to hear descriptions of images from Mail, Photos, social media apps, and more.
Seeing AI uses technology like self-driving cars and drones. Click here to download the free app for iOS.
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Readers, what do you think? Have any of you tried this app? I have played with it and like it. Maybe, because it thinks I’m only 71. I couldn’t get it to read coins, but it did a great job reading bills (under the currency feature). Be warned, you must hold the camera steady to get it to focus. Also, it only did a fair job reading my handwritten grocery list. My handwriting isn’t that great, so it could only read the words that were halfway legible.