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by qrazhan 4336 days ago
My initial impression of this app is that it's a cool demo of OCR technology, but I'm not sure how useful it would actually be to blind people. How would they know if they are taking a good enough picture of the text in the first place? How do they even hit the button? I could see using one of the hardware buttons as a shutter could work, but I don't know if you can do that in iOS.

(Note: I'm neither blind nor an iOS user so I do not know how blind users use iOS. Please correct me if I am wrong.)
1 comments
arrrg 4336 days ago
Using apps is no problem (if devs don’t ignore accessibility). iOS comes with a screenreader (VoiceOver) and all the default apps are accessible. Here is a (somewhat boring) walkthrough of the Camera app using VoiceOver: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVDojENUGw0

Here is a somewhat more entertaining video of a blind person using Instagram, also on the iPhone with VoiceOver: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1e7ZCKQfMA

Here is a video from the same guy, using an app to identify objects: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeB0BH8rAc8&list=UUld5SlwHrX...

Basically, taping on the screen once will read to you what you just tapped, tapping twice (anywhere on the screen) will then select that. There are also gestures to navigate the different elements on the screen (mostly what you would expect, e.g. swiping forward/backward to got to the next/previous element)

I think Android has a similar screenreader by now (no idea how good it is) and I can only recommend playing around with it to get a feel for it.

I would assume taking good enough pictures is just a question of patience and practice. There is feedback (how much, if anything, was recognized?) so it’s possible to learn and get better at it.

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