This is a recovered post from Blogger.
Posted: 20 Jun 2019 04:32 AM PDT
⠀ This Thursday’s useful app is Seeing ⠠⠠⠁⠊⠀which is the best app for ⠉⠁⠏⠞⠡⠁⠬⠀print text and speaking the text out loud. You can also read the captchaed text using a braille “play or if captchaing a document export it as document.html
To download search for Microsoft Seeing AI on the App Store or go ⠞⠕⠀SeeingAi.com
If any of your questions about Seeing AI are not answered by the website or you have any problems using Seeing AI contact their help team on SeeingAI@microsoft.com
App review (from Tactile Times Issue 1 published in August 2018, this may be out of date information)
Seeing AI
Rating: 4.5 stars
What is Seeing AI?
Seeing AI is a free app for iOS users that Microsoft have developed for blind people. It can read text, recognise people, tell you what is in a photo, scan barcodes and do a lot more. If you are a blind person who cannot read print and you have an iphone or ipad, I recommend you download this free app. I use this app a lot especially for reading signs or restaurant menus using the short text function and/or document function + reading handwriting.
To get the app, open the App store on your iPhone or iPad and search for “Microsoft Seeing A I”
Channels:
Seeing AI has lots of different channels for different things, including one for short text and one for handwriting. I have included what each channel does below:
Short text — This channel is good for reading text on signs, letters and more. I can now tell which letters are mine on my own using the Seeing AI app.
Document — This channel is good for reading print documents. You can also email the document to yourself so you can keep it once you have scanned it into the app. This channel is good for restaurant menus, leaflets, letters and more. It has a really helpful feature that helps you line up the phone with the document.
Person — This channel can identify a person reasonably well. It often gets the age wrong by more than 10 years though! You can also add people to your phone’s memory and that way you can identify who is sitting round a table or is in a room, using your phone. This can be quite funny as well as useful!
Scene preview — This channel can identify scenes, for example if there was someone on a sofa looking at a computer in front of you, it would tell you that there was someone sitting on a sofa looking at a computer.
Handwriting preview — This channel is for reading handwriting. I use it for birthday cards, letters and more. It does not give camera guidance to help you line up your phone but hopefully this will come.
Colour preview — This channel will tell you what colour things are. Sometimes it gets the colour very wrong so I recommend you don’t try and use it to make your outfit match.
Light — This channel will make a low pitched sound if there is not very much light and a high pitched sound if there is more light. This means you do not need to buy a light meter, you can instead use this app.
Currency — This channel can be used to identify euros, pounds and dollars + a few other currencies (only notes) but it will not work on certain iPhones with certain iOS versions.
Product — This channel can identify what product you place below the phone/iPad by reading the bar code of the item. It has beeps that will get closed and closer together until the phone/iPad is on top of the bar code. This is a great feature that helps you find the bar code to scan.
The screen layout:
In the Seeing AI app there is a button at the top of the screen which is the menu button. If you swipe right using voice over you will find the quick help button which is also at the top of the screen, this button gives you a basic description of the channel you are on. If you swipe right again you will find the take picture button which is only visible on certain channels, this button can be used to take a picture of the thing you are trying to recognize. If you swipe right again you will find the pause announcements button, this button will pause anything the app is reading or saying until you click it again, (it will be called resume announcements if the announcements are paused). If you swipe right again you will find a picker item called channel, you can swipe up or down to change the channel.
The menu:
Below I have put a list of the items in the menu and what they do.
Close button — This will close the menu
(NEW:) Browse photos — If you click this button it will bring up the photos that are saved to your phone/iPad. You can click on one of the photos and it will tell you what text, scenes or people are in the photo.
Face recognition — You can add people to a list of recognisable people using this feature, they can then be identified by their names in the person channel. You will need to take 3 pictures of them and then enter their name.
Help — This will take you to a help page in the app. This is useful for basic help with Seeing AI.
Feedback — This button will compose an email to the Seeing AI feedback email address. All you will need to do to feed back about the app is type in the subject and message in the Apple Mail app.
Settings — This will take you to a Seeing AI settings page which have various settings including what currency you want to recognize on the currency channel.
About — This will tell you the version of Seeing AI you have and will list the terms of use
If you do download the app then why not write in to the Tactile Times Newspaper and let us know what you’ve found most useful about this app?
To find out more go to seeingai.com
Written by Theo , 11.