5 ms·

A new app allows blind people to listen to an audio readback of printed text

60 points by sethbannon 12y ago

Mithaldu 12y ago
It's a fairly clever idea, it combines "Google Goggles" instant OCR with instant text-to-speech, to make the phone read out what the camera is seeing. The one worry i have is that, since modern phones have no tactile input (nevermind feedback), it means a blind person will have a cellphone for the single purpose of being a mobile OCR-reader. Can people with actual experience maybe weigh in on this? Also, holy damn, i wish it were illegal for journalists to lie in their titles.
- Aaron1011 12y ago
  Yeah, I clicked on the link thinking, "Wait - actually SEE? How could that possibly work with just an app?"
- Istof 12y ago
  I have no clue why physical sliding keyboards basically disappeared from "smart phones"... they are not only good for the blinds (I guess they probably make pretty much the same amount of money whether they include it or not)
  - ctoth 12y ago
    Actually, as a blind person, typing on a touch screen isn't that hard, and frankly I don't even find myself typing that much with the advent of reasonable dictation. In a majority of cases for short texts I can dash off something as fast as a sighted person, and for longer-form material I will use Siri's dictation for a great speed advantage.
    - Istof 12y ago
      have you ever tried a phone featuring a sliding keyboard? is it not easier/faster then a touch screen?
      - silencio 12y ago
        But that usually comes at a loss for screen space. More screen space gives you more flexibility for more touch interactions (see rotor for voiceover, possible use of assistivetouch, etc.) and more information displayed when zoomed in (if applicable, which is _amazing_ to use for my visually impaired but not blind father). Then I have a mountain of other uses if you want to go into accessibility features for other disabilities, just on iOS. And if we're talking about typing on a physical device, a fair number of visually impaired folks I know have bluetooth braille displays (e.g. note taking w/iPads in class), or you can sub a regular keyboard to that instead if wanted (if you don't want the display either). From my sighted but alternative perspective on why physical keyboards built into phones is not the best idea either, I enjoy being able to type in English and Korean, then swap over to Chinese handwriting when needed. I don't have the same thumb typing muscle memory for other languages/layouts than I do for qwerty, so it's great to see what I'm typing occasionally.
    - ricardonunez 12y ago
      I imagine Siri was a life changing. Did you try the swype keyboard? So far has been the best keyboard I have tried.
      - mwcampbell 12y ago
        The real game-changer was VoiceOver, which Apple introduced with the iPhone 3GS in June 2009. Blind people were using their iPhones with VoiceOver for over two years before Apple integrated Siri. Siri is quite convenient though. As for alternate keyboards, Fleksy has been popular among blind iOS users.
        hobarrera 12y ago
        Flesky's website just goes over and over about how it's "the best in the world", but doesn't actually describe the product. Could you tell us a bit about what makes it different?
- ctoth 12y ago
  This may surprise you, but I am a totally blind iPhone user and have been for about 4 years. Before this, I owned a series of Nokia devices, the 6682, N95, etc. Previously, on the s60 devices, we had to purchase a $350 screen reader to make the phone talk. Now, on any iPhone running iOS 4 or later, (so... all of them) I can press the home button 3 times, or just ask Siri to turn on VoiceOver, and I am instantly granted the same level of access to the device that my sighted colleagues expect. Apple is seriously amazing in terms of accessibility -- all of their built-in apps are 100% accessible, all controls labeled, all custom interaction elements given clear accessible descriptions/access tips. Search on YouTube for blind people using the iPhone/iPad, I expect it will blow your mind. Even more awesome than the iPhone's built-in accessibility is the fact that it's so easy for 3rd party developers to make their own apps accessible. All native controls are accessible by default, all you need do as a developer is add labels. For custom controls, such as chess boards, Apple provides an incredibly powerful accessibility API, allowing developers to enable access for anything. I personally play Shredder Chess on the iPhone as the developer has explicitly enabled accessibility for it. There are real blind people using these devices, and I hope you consider this the next time you are thinking about how accessibility fits/doesn't into your next project.
  - 3rd3 12y ago
    Excuse my curiosity but I got to ask how you experience browsing Hacker News accessibility wise. Can you make out the tree-like ordering of the comments? Can you see that comments are light-grey when they have many downvotes?
    - ctoth 12y ago
      Curiosity is *never something to be excused. It's to be celebrated. Anyway, HN is actually not all that great in terms of accessibility. The tree styling of the comments, and the marking of downvotes are both indicated visually and not semantically. It means that I will often have to use context to determine where one thread ends and another begins, or when comments pass my personal taste threshold I just whack page down a few times.
      - 12y ago
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - dang 12y ago
    In cases of misleading headlines you can look to subtitles or (failing that) a sentence from the article which describes the thing factually. There usually is one.
lilymuki 12y ago
http://livestreamwatch.skyrock.com/3232051789-Philadelphia-Eagles-vs-Washington-Redskins-live-stream-watch-here-NFL.html http://livestreamwatch.skyrock.com/3232051789-Philadelphia-E...
lilymuki 12y ago
http://livestreamwatch.skyrock.com/3232051789-Philadelphia-Eagles-vs-Washington-Redskins-live-stream-watch-here-NFL.html http://livestreamwatch.skyrock.com/3232051789-Philadelphia-E...
jareds 12y ago
As a totally blind user I won't buy this app. There isn't that much printed material I need to deal with now and there are $5 apps that will generally let me get good enough oCR to determine what junk mail I am getting. I would pay the $99 if it were an in app purchase and the app was limited to say 5 scans a month but with no trial type thing I will not be buying it.
mcphilip 12y ago
Watching the promotional video[1] of the iPhone app, the one question that springs to mind is how the blind people know how to orient their phone to the objects shown in the video. For instance, reading the hours a store is open: there is no standard place to put that signage, so how likely is this use case to be applied in real world scenarios? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cS-i9rn9nao https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cS-i9rn9nao
- adrianhoward 12y ago
  Many people who are classified as blind have some kind of vision perception — just very, very degraded compared to "normal" vision. So while they might not be able to read, they would be able to at least make educational guesses as to where text might be.
eugeneyev 12y ago
Does anyone know of other similar apps - particularly ones supporting more languages? Specifically - Russian Would be an awesome gift for my grandfather whose vision has deteriorated significantly due to age. He is 90+, so most of the documents he is actually interested in reading are printed or even hand-written. We've been able to teach him to use an iPad and the built-in voiceover functionality is great for helping read the books/newspapers we pre-load on the device. However it doesn't help much with printed documents - or even just reading the newspaper. Something like this app really would be a game changer (assuming it's intuitive to use), however it looks like their current language support is only limited to the following: English, French, German, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Danish, Finnish, Swedish, and Norwegian.

60 points by sethbannon 12y ago

It's a fairly clever idea, it combines "Google Goggles" instant OCR with instant text-to-speech, to make the phone read out what the camera is seeing. The one worry i have is that, since modern phones have no tactile input (nevermind feedback), it means a blind person will have a cellphone for the single purpose of being a mobile OCR-reader. Can people with actual experience maybe weigh in on this? Also, holy damn, i wish it were illegal for journalists to lie in their titles.

Aaron1011 12y ago
Yeah, I clicked on the link thinking, "Wait - actually SEE? How could that possibly work with just an app?"
Istof 12y ago
I have no clue why physical sliding keyboards basically disappeared from "smart phones"... they are not only good for the blinds (I guess they probably make pretty much the same amount of money whether they include it or not)
- ctoth 12y ago
  Actually, as a blind person, typing on a touch screen isn't that hard, and frankly I don't even find myself typing that much with the advent of reasonable dictation. In a majority of cases for short texts I can dash off something as fast as a sighted person, and for longer-form material I will use Siri's dictation for a great speed advantage.
  - Istof 12y ago
    have you ever tried a phone featuring a sliding keyboard? is it not easier/faster then a touch screen?
    - silencio 12y ago
      But that usually comes at a loss for screen space. More screen space gives you more flexibility for more touch interactions (see rotor for voiceover, possible use of assistivetouch, etc.) and more information displayed when zoomed in (if applicable, which is _amazing_ to use for my visually impaired but not blind father). Then I have a mountain of other uses if you want to go into accessibility features for other disabilities, just on iOS. And if we're talking about typing on a physical device, a fair number of visually impaired folks I know have bluetooth braille displays (e.g. note taking w/iPads in class), or you can sub a regular keyboard to that instead if wanted (if you don't want the display either). From my sighted but alternative perspective on why physical keyboards built into phones is not the best idea either, I enjoy being able to type in English and Korean, then swap over to Chinese handwriting when needed. I don't have the same thumb typing muscle memory for other languages/layouts than I do for qwerty, so it's great to see what I'm typing occasionally.
  - ricardonunez 12y ago
    I imagine Siri was a life changing. Did you try the swype keyboard? So far has been the best keyboard I have tried.
    - mwcampbell 12y ago
      The real game-changer was VoiceOver, which Apple introduced with the iPhone 3GS in June 2009. Blind people were using their iPhones with VoiceOver for over two years before Apple integrated Siri. Siri is quite convenient though. As for alternate keyboards, Fleksy has been popular among blind iOS users.
      - hobarrera 12y ago
        Flesky's website just goes over and over about how it's "the best in the world", but doesn't actually describe the product. Could you tell us a bit about what makes it different?
ctoth 12y ago
This may surprise you, but I am a totally blind iPhone user and have been for about 4 years. Before this, I owned a series of Nokia devices, the 6682, N95, etc. Previously, on the s60 devices, we had to purchase a $350 screen reader to make the phone talk. Now, on any iPhone running iOS 4 or later, (so... all of them) I can press the home button 3 times, or just ask Siri to turn on VoiceOver, and I am instantly granted the same level of access to the device that my sighted colleagues expect. Apple is seriously amazing in terms of accessibility -- all of their built-in apps are 100% accessible, all controls labeled, all custom interaction elements given clear accessible descriptions/access tips. Search on YouTube for blind people using the iPhone/iPad, I expect it will blow your mind. Even more awesome than the iPhone's built-in accessibility is the fact that it's so easy for 3rd party developers to make their own apps accessible. All native controls are accessible by default, all you need do as a developer is add labels. For custom controls, such as chess boards, Apple provides an incredibly powerful accessibility API, allowing developers to enable access for anything. I personally play Shredder Chess on the iPhone as the developer has explicitly enabled accessibility for it. There are real blind people using these devices, and I hope you consider this the next time you are thinking about how accessibility fits/doesn't into your next project.
- 3rd3 12y ago
  Excuse my curiosity but I got to ask how you experience browsing Hacker News accessibility wise. Can you make out the tree-like ordering of the comments? Can you see that comments are light-grey when they have many downvotes?
  - ctoth 12y ago
    Curiosity is *never something to be excused. It's to be celebrated. Anyway, HN is actually not all that great in terms of accessibility. The tree styling of the comments, and the marking of downvotes are both indicated visually and not semantically. It means that I will often have to use context to determine where one thread ends and another begins, or when comments pass my personal taste threshold I just whack page down a few times.
    - 12y ago
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- dang 12y ago
  In cases of misleading headlines you can look to subtitles or (failing that) a sentence from the article which describes the thing factually. There usually is one.

lilymuki 12y ago

http://livestreamwatch.skyrock.com/3232051789-Philadelphia-Eagles-vs-Washington-Redskins-live-stream-watch-here-NFL.html http://livestreamwatch.skyrock.com/3232051789-Philadelphia-E...

lilymuki 12y ago

http://livestreamwatch.skyrock.com/3232051789-Philadelphia-Eagles-vs-Washington-Redskins-live-stream-watch-here-NFL.html http://livestreamwatch.skyrock.com/3232051789-Philadelphia-E...

jareds 12y ago

As a totally blind user I won't buy this app. There isn't that much printed material I need to deal with now and there are $5 apps that will generally let me get good enough oCR to determine what junk mail I am getting. I would pay the $99 if it were an in app purchase and the app was limited to say 5 scans a month but with no trial type thing I will not be buying it.

mcphilip 12y ago

Watching the promotional video[1] of the iPhone app, the one question that springs to mind is how the blind people know how to orient their phone to the objects shown in the video. For instance, reading the hours a store is open: there is no standard place to put that signage, so how likely is this use case to be applied in real world scenarios? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cS-i9rn9nao https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cS-i9rn9nao

adrianhoward 12y ago
Many people who are classified as blind have some kind of vision perception — just very, very degraded compared to "normal" vision. So while they might not be able to read, they would be able to at least make educational guesses as to where text might be.

eugeneyev 12y ago

Does anyone know of other similar apps - particularly ones supporting more languages? Specifically - Russian Would be an awesome gift for my grandfather whose vision has deteriorated significantly due to age. He is 90+, so most of the documents he is actually interested in reading are printed or even hand-written. We've been able to teach him to use an iPad and the built-in voiceover functionality is great for helping read the books/newspapers we pre-load on the device. However it doesn't help much with printed documents - or even just reading the newspaper. Something like this app really would be a game changer (assuming it's intuitive to use), however it looks like their current language support is only limited to the following: English, French, German, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Danish, Finnish, Swedish, and Norwegian.