Check out the new APP!

Let’s talk about the free App Seeing Ai . It is for the Blind and Low vision users. A research project, the developers encourage you to participate and tell them what you think.

This app I downloaded on my iPhone and is for use with or without voice over. Seeing Ai describes nearby people, text, and objects. Microsoft says It is an intelligent camera app and “Turns the visual world into an audible experience”  It can provide information about the world around you. They say you “Switch between channels to hear about different things you want to know about.” Ref: microsoft.com

This “first channel” of the app was great for reading short text like mail or a menu or even a sign. The app will recognize short “snippets” of text- it will start telling you as soon as it is in front of the camera! I was a able to read my medicine bottle, the piece of mail on the table. I really had fun looking for ways to use this part of the app. It worked very well and I am excited to show it to many of my clients who own an iPhone!

It did have issues in lowlight situations but there is a setting Manage Lighting. When I put it on, it turns on the flashlight app in low light situations. It also skipped some words and had trouble reading maps and text that was creatively positioned. It did read signs and text printed on the wall including telling me which was the men’s room and which was the ladies room. It had a little difficulty with shiny menus when the light was low and the flashlight was on. It even worked when Voice over was not on! It does not yet work on handwriting.

This second channel on this APP will  recognize whole documents. It uses audio to guide you to properly capture a page of print.  It will tell you when the top and bottom and sides are visible and tell you to hold it steady. It then takes a picture on its own and will read it too you. It not only recognizes the text but keeps the formatting. This means that you can use voice over to navigate by the formatting such as headings.

I found this channel did well but had a little bit of a learning curve. Soon I was able to use it on documents with my eyes closed! You can then share the info and it would even be read by Prizmo! (another app) I could post the info to Twitter, Facebook send it in an email, and add to Dropbox or iCloud! It is easier to use than the KNFB reader and is free!

In the third channel Seeing Ai will recognize bar codes of products and tell you what they are. The App starts beeping when it sees the barcode and then beeps faster when it is able to see the whole scan code and give you the info. You can also share the info. If available is has a more button which tells you more about the product  I found its data base did not have some products and did not let you add info like the ID Mate does.

I found this part of the APP pretty easy to use and accurately identified everything I scanned that was in its data base. I would like it to have the ability to add information and have scan stick on’s for things like clothing, medicine bottles and other items that do not have a inherent scan code. I would also like it to read scan QR codes.

The fourth channel on this App recognizes and saves peoples faces. This allows the user to recognize others and even tries to estimate their age, gender and emotions. Seeing Ai tries to guide you to properly take the picture. Then take a picture and it will describes the number of people in the picture and also their gender, estimate of age and their emotion.

You can also take three pictures of a person you know and add their name and when it sees that person it states there name and their location relative to the phones camera!

The last channel incredibly tries to describe scenes. It takes pictures and then tries to define and tell you what it sees. It is in beta and says some funny things. It described a chair and a lamp in my hotel room as a lamp with a pink blanket. It has a lot of work to do but I had fun with it! You can save the photo or share it.

This Info on the web said that Seeing Ai also has the ability to recognize things like photos or a visual image. Just share the unreadable to Seeing Ai and it will recognize it!

According to theVerge.com the app uses neural networks to identify the world around it. This is the same technology that is powering self driving cars and drones. Seeing AI’s experimental features require a connection to the cloud. According to the lead tech Saqib Shaikh, using the neural networks in conjunction with OCR to direct the user and make its response quicker.

All in all Seeing Ai combines many functions that I have separate apps to do the same thing. Plus it is free whereas some of the apps I have had to pay for. It is an ever evolving research project and In the future it will include a currency bill reader. They are working on recognizing handwriting.  One App to do so much! NO BRAINER! =-)

Download Seeing Ai from iTunes

Download Seeing Ai for Android