Top Accessibility Apps for the Visually Impaired

Here are my top 10 apps that are great for accessibility for people who are blind and visually impaired and maybe just a few extras that I couldn't help adding. Hi everyone, welcome to Carry On Accessibility where we talk about technology and accessibility. I am really excited about this video. I did a top 5 on my old channel a long time ago and it's... about time that I update it but this time I wanted to talk about a whole bunch of apps and if you have your own favorites and recommendations please share them in the comments so we can all try them out. Let's just go ahead and get started. This is in no real particular order but number one is Seeing AI and now it's available on both iPhone and Android. You can use it to read text or documents, even handwriting. It has some new AI features that I go over in a separate video. It is really such a great app and I'm very happy that it is finally on Android. It has a lot of other features as well like barcode scanning. scene descriptions with AI, it has color identification and light detection, and on iPhone it has extra features like the world channel. and I'm waiting for them to bring that world channel to Android, please Microsoft. It's really such a great app. It has a dark mode and it's completely free. Number two is the Envision app. It used to be called Envision AI. They also have glasses that are a couple thousand dollars but the app is completely free which is great. It didn't used to be but now it is completely free. You can do very similar things to Seeing AI. scan text, you can do documents, barcodes, light, color, all sorts of things. But one thing I really really like about the InVision app is I can send it a PDF and it can just OCR the whole PDF. It does take a little bit if you're trying to scan a 300-500 page PDF, but it is great and you can save it to your InVision library. It's great that it's free and it's available on iPhone and Android. Number three is Aira. Most people think that Aira is a paid service and yes, it absolutely is. However, there are so many free things you can do with Aira. Let's back up though. Aira is a visual interpreting service so you can call an agent. Yes, it's a trained agent, which is why. it is paid and they can help you using the back of your camera. You can have them describe whatever it is that you're trying to look at or read. You do get five free minutes every 48 hours, which doesn't seem like much, but there's also access points that are completely free. So there's some airports, Starbucks. Yes, Starbucks is very important. Bank of America. They also have a job seeker access offer where you get 30 free minutes and you can look through the access offer catalog on the app. But besides that, you can use Access AI which is my favorite AI chatbot that's Made particularly for people who are blind or visually impaired. It has a dark mode on both iOS and Android. It has a history of all your chats where you can share and copy images and the text. And you can continue your conversation with the AI. Another feature that I really like is the fact that you can... add detailed images so you can send an image with a question at the same time. You can also attach multiple images all at once with an accompanying question all in one message. For US residents, I talked about Build.ai where you get 10 free minutes every 30 minutes but you they use that information for training. models of AI if you join the program. So I will link that video up here if you want to learn more about it. iRaw is available on iOS and Android and you can also access it on the web. Number 4 is Be My Eyes, which is also a visual interpreting service but they use volunteers so it's completely free. You can call a volunteer anytime but you can also use specialized help which connects you to one of their partners like Google or Microsoft. Not Apple though, but they also have a service directory so if you're trying to reach either customer service or maybe a dedicated accessibility line, they may have it on their service directory. They also have Be My AI which is another AI chatbot that's designed for people who are blind and visually impaired. You can do all the same things, attach a picture, ask questions, describe things. However, there is no dark mode on Android as of the time of this recording, which makes me really sad. There's also no call history, but they do have some Siri shortcuts, which is pretty cool. Be My Eyes is available on... iPhone, Android devices, and there is also a Windows app. Number five is Gemini. It's another AI chatbot that is meant for everybody, so it wasn't designed for people who are blind or visually impaired, but it is very accessible. If you're using it on Android, you can have it replace Google Assistant if you want to. Google's working to improve Gemini. It has really great voices and you can have a conversation about anything. Ask it information. You can also send it images. You can ask it to help you find different things or different links. And I just find it overall super helpful. It is available on Android. If you're using iPhone, you can access it with the Google app. There's a little Gemini tab within the Google app. but you can't replace Siri with it. You can also access it using a web browser. Just go to gemini.google.com. It can really do a lot of different things and I use it nearly every single day. And the more they improve it, the better it gets. Hopefully Siri will catch up for iPhones. I'm actually really hopeful about that. So depending on when you're watching this, you can try out Siri. Maybe it has gotten all its AI features that it was promised, or you can try out ChatGPT as well. However, I find that it is a little less accessible. accessible than Gemini. Number six is WeeZoom. However, that's only available on Android, so I guess I can also talk about the iPhone magnifier, which is also pretty good. They use the back-facing camera, and then you can zoom in, zoom out. You can adjust the brightness or the contrast and use different color filters. On WeeZoom, you have advanced gestures like two-finger tap to change the color contrast. Then there's a three finger swipe up and down and four finger swipe up and down to change contrast and exposure. I also find their color filters a lot easier to use. One cool thing about the iPhone magnifier is you can actually save activities, kind of like saving profiles. Magnifier on iPhone also has a lot of other features like detection mode where you can have door detection, have it read text for you, kind of like OCR, and my favorite which is point and speak where you can point at text and have it read that text which incidentally is really cool for when you're playing board games number seven is digi clock widget for android it lets you make the largest clock possible on android devices whether it's a phone or a tablet and it is just great you can customize it so much you can make it any color you can change the fonts it's Really awesome. You can also add infeasible shortcuts on each corner of the widget to like open different apps Which is just like a little extra thing. That's neat. One app that I do use on iPhone That's a little similar is D clock however the clock doesn't get as large and so if you have a recommendation for a Clock widget that can get really large on iPhone, please let me know in the comments Number eight is Uber. Since I'm blind, I'm not able to drive and unless I have family or a friend drive me, I don't really have access to paratransit and there's no sidewalks in my area. Unfortunately, they don't believe in sidewalks. I use Uber quite a bit and I also use Uber Eats, which is also accessible through the Uber app. If I could, I would go out and walk and pick up whatever I needed, but Uber is just... super helpful. It's mostly accessible with a screen reader. It's a little less accessible with large fonts and large display scaling, but it still works and it is just such a useful, useful, very useful app. Boober is available on iOS and Android and you can also do some things on the web as well. Number nine is Instacart. Just like Uber, it's super convenient since I can't drive and this is mostly for groceries. I've used Instacart in the past and it is mostly accessible. I really wish they had a dark mode but it is available on iOS and Android. You can use it for free but it's if you're going to use it a lot probably a membership would be a good idea. And number 10, reader apps. I'm gonna cheat a little here and we're actually going to make this a category instead of a specific app. I kind of want to say 11 Labs Reader. Right now, it is completely free which is why I actually really like it. They have great AI voices and you can read web articles, you can just copy and paste text. Or you can do epubs and maybe you can do pdfs too. They just have really nice voices. But it is limited to a couple tens of thousands of words, I think. 50,000 if I remember correctly is available on iOS and Android. Right now it's free but I'm afraid that in the future it will be a paid service since usually 11 lives is a paid service. on the web. But there are a lot of different alternatives. One of my favorites on Android is reading mode. You can even use that with a Android accessibility shortcut, which is awesome. That one just mostly works with articles but it is really useful and also has really great voices. There's also Speech Central which is available on both iOS and Android and has the same basic concept. Share a file or a web page or pdf or something and it will be able to read that out loud for you and you can play that in the background. There's also Speechify but you do have to pay for that one I believe and they have some quote premium voices. Another Android only app that I've also used is AT, like the at symbol, voice aloud reader, which is also a good choice. The best free voices right now is 11Labs and the Google reading mode. So those are my top 10 apps or category. But there are still so many really great apps that I really like. First of which is BARD. If you are a NLS patron, National Library Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired, you can use BARD on your mobile app, which is fantastic. You can get audiobooks for free. and listen to them. It's a really great service, however, they don't usually have the newer books and sometimes you can get really frustrated with the narrator sometimes, especially if it's a series. and they keep changing the narrator each time. That kind of drives me a little nuts, I'm not gonna lie. The BARD app is available on iOS and Android. Another app that's kind of in the same category is Libby. It's a really great accessible app. It's available on iOS and Android as well and it uses the library services in your state or county. You can get audiobooks or ebooks and There's even one for movies, I believe, and it's a really cool one. However, there is some limitations. Sometimes there are only a limited amount of copies for a specific book or audiobook, and you have to wait. But if you want some of the newer ones, they're much faster, much faster than Bard to get the newer ones, and even having to wait a few weeks for other people to read it. There's also Bookshare if you're a student, you can get it for free and you can get Braille books or Daisy books and also just read the books using the app. It's available on iOS and Android. That is a pretty popular one as well. I also really like Audible. I do pay for Audible. It is pricey but sometimes the book is just not available or you're just not. willing to wait or I'm not willing to wait and Audible is a great choice. Audible is available on iOS, Android, and Amazon Echo devices so you can play it on your Echo devices as well which I have done. Kindle is another app. It's for ebooks. You can make the text really large. It's accessible with TalkBack or VoiceOver on iOS or Android or Kindle devices and you can even have Kindle books be read aloud by your Amazon Echo device. or the A-L-E-X-A, and it also has the assistive reader, so you can just listen to your book with the Kindle app open. Since I've kind of mentioned it a few times, the A-L-E-X-A app is also a really great app. You can have that lady, the A lady, do things for you and talk to you and do skills and read books with that app on your phone. Another app that I really like to use is CamScanner. There's a free version but there's also a paid version for that and it's available on iOS and Android. You can use it to scan documents but what really stands out to me with CamScanner is that it's a really easy app. You can scan documents and read books with it. is how it really enhances the image and a lot of the time it's so much easier to scan documents or even a book with cam scanner and then use magnification to go back and forth and read that text instead of using a magnifier. It just is like really clear and much easier to see. There's a few other alternatives like Microsoft Lens and even the Google Drive scan feature, however, CamScanner, I feel, does the best with enhancing the image. However, CamScanner is not very accessible for a screen reader. I did send them an email, but they don't seem to be very interested in making it accessible, unfortunately. One app that's only available on iPhones is the OKO app. It uses artificial intelligence and the rear-facing camera on your iPhone to determine whether you should cross a street or not. Sam from The Blind Life did a great video on it. If you want to learn more, go check out his video. Like I mentioned before, in my area we don't really have sidewalks so I haven't had the opportunity to test this out. On Android, again, I also really like Nova Launcher which is a basically replaces your home screen and you just have more controls. There's more shortcuts. It's pretty accessible and I just like it better than the Pixel or even the Samsung launcher. There's also Button Mapper. I use this every single day. I have it set to long pressing the volume down to open WeZoom. Since I can't tie Wezoom to a specific accessibility shortcut, this is really helpful for me to really quickly access Wezoom. And then I have pressing and holding the volume up for seeing AI. Maybe one day I'll make a video about button mapper. But I find it a really great and useful app. Earlier I mentioned Wezoom and the iPhone magnifier. On Samsung, they have a Samsung magnifier and on Pixel, there is a Pixel magnifier as well. There are some apps that I use but I wouldn't say is my favorite. Amazon, I use it a lot because I use Amazon a lot. However, their app is really frustrating because there's no dark mode and so much of the text gets cut off if you're using larger display scaling as well as larger font sizes. There's also Walmart which has the same issue. I used to use Instacart but like Walmart is cheaper and that's what my family is using right now. And it's just... really really frustrating for somebody visually impaired. There's also DoorDash instead of using Uber Eats, but again it doesn't have a dark mode and honestly I just end up using Uber Eats because it's an easier experience for me. Google Lookout is another one that I occasionally use but I intentionally did not add it to the top 10. It's because they updated it and it's just the interface. I don't like the interface and while the OZR is faster, than say in vision or seeing AI or that at least that's my experience. It's just most of the time not really worth it for me. One cool feature they do have is the food labels. If I'm at the grocery store, I can just use the camera and point it at the freezers or the boxes and it will announce what it sees. without having to find and scan the barcode which I guess is pretty neat. I could keep going but I'm gonna stop here. Those are my top 10 with just a little bit of extra. I hope that you enjoyed this video. It was really fun for me and again if you have your own recommendations or your own favorites leave those in the comments and share with the community. If you like this video or found it helpful give it a thumbs up below Don't forget to subscribe and if you would like to support my channel and what I do here, consider becoming a Patreon or YouTube member or just sharing this video. And you can also check out the Amazon storefront, amazon.com slash shop slash carry on accessibility. Thank you so much for watching. You guys are awesome and I will catch you in the next one.

about time that I update it but this time I wanted to talk about a whole bunch of apps and if you have your own favorites and recommendations please share them in the comments so we can all try them out. Let's just go ahead and get started. This is in no real particular order but number one is Seeing AI and now it's available on both iPhone and Android.

You can use it to read text or documents, even handwriting. It has some new AI features that I go over in a separate video. It is really such a great app and I'm very happy that it is finally on Android.

It has a lot of other features as well like barcode scanning. scene descriptions with AI, it has color identification and light detection, and on iPhone it has extra features like the world channel. and I'm waiting for them to bring that world channel to Android, please Microsoft. It's really such a great app. It has a dark mode and it's completely free.

Number two is the Envision app. It used to be called Envision AI. They also have glasses that are a couple thousand dollars but the app is completely free which is great. It didn't used to be but now it is completely free. You can do very similar things to Seeing AI.

scan text, you can do documents, barcodes, light, color, all sorts of things. But one thing I really really like about the InVision app is I can send it a PDF and it can just OCR the whole PDF. It does take a little bit if you're trying to scan a 300-500 page PDF, but it is great and you can save it to your InVision library. It's great that it's free and it's available on iPhone and Android. Number three is Aira.

Most people think that Aira is a paid service and yes, it absolutely is. However, there are so many free things you can do with Aira. Let's back up though. Aira is a visual interpreting service so you can call an agent. Yes, it's a trained agent, which is why.

it is paid and they can help you using the back of your camera. You can have them describe whatever it is that you're trying to look at or read. You do get five free minutes every 48 hours, which doesn't seem like much, but there's also access points that are completely free.

So there's some airports, Starbucks. Yes, Starbucks is very important. Bank of America.

They also have a job seeker access offer where you get 30 free minutes and you can look through the access offer catalog on the app. But besides that, you can use Access AI which is my favorite AI chatbot that's Made particularly for people who are blind or visually impaired. It has a dark mode on both iOS and Android.

It has a history of all your chats where you can share and copy images and the text. And you can continue your conversation with the AI. Another feature that I really like is the fact that you can... add detailed images so you can send an image with a question at the same time. You can also attach multiple images all at once with an accompanying question all in one message.

For US residents, I talked about Build.ai where you get 10 free minutes every 30 minutes but you they use that information for training. models of AI if you join the program. So I will link that video up here if you want to learn more about it.

iRaw is available on iOS and Android and you can also access it on the web. Number 4 is Be My Eyes, which is also a visual interpreting service but they use volunteers so it's completely free. You can call a volunteer anytime but you can also use specialized help which connects you to one of their partners like Google or Microsoft. Not Apple though, but they also have a service directory so if you're trying to reach either customer service or maybe a dedicated accessibility line, they may have it on their service directory.

They also have Be My AI which is another AI chatbot that's designed for people who are blind and visually impaired. You can do all the same things, attach a picture, ask questions, describe things. However, there is no dark mode on Android as of the time of this recording, which makes me really sad.

There's also no call history, but they do have some Siri shortcuts, which is pretty cool. Be My Eyes is available on... iPhone, Android devices, and there is also a Windows app.

Number five is Gemini. It's another AI chatbot that is meant for everybody, so it wasn't designed for people who are blind or visually impaired, but it is very accessible. If you're using it on Android, you can have it replace Google Assistant if you want to. Google's working to improve Gemini.

It has really great voices and you can have a conversation about anything. Ask it information. You can also send it images. You can ask it to help you find different things or different links.

And I just find it overall super helpful. It is available on Android. If you're using iPhone, you can access it with the Google app. There's a little Gemini tab within the Google app. but you can't replace Siri with it.

You can also access it using a web browser. Just go to gemini.google.com. It can really do a lot of different things and I use it nearly every single day.

And the more they improve it, the better it gets. Hopefully Siri will catch up for iPhones. I'm actually really hopeful about that.

So depending on when you're watching this, you can try out Siri. Maybe it has gotten all its AI features that it was promised, or you can try out ChatGPT as well. However, I find that it is a little less accessible. accessible than Gemini.

Number six is WeeZoom. However, that's only available on Android, so I guess I can also talk about the iPhone magnifier, which is also pretty good. They use the back-facing camera, and then you can zoom in, zoom out. You can adjust the brightness or the contrast and use different color filters. On WeeZoom, you have advanced gestures like two-finger tap to change the color contrast.

Then there's a three finger swipe up and down and four finger swipe up and down to change contrast and exposure. I also find their color filters a lot easier to use. One cool thing about the iPhone magnifier is you can actually save activities, kind of like saving profiles.

Magnifier on iPhone also has a lot of other features like detection mode where you can have door detection, have it read text for you, kind of like OCR, and my favorite which is point and speak where you can point at text and have it read that text which incidentally is really cool for when you're playing board games number seven is digi clock widget for android it lets you make the largest clock possible on android devices whether it's a phone or a tablet and it is just great you can customize it so much you can make it any color you can change the fonts it's Really awesome. You can also add infeasible shortcuts on each corner of the widget to like open different apps Which is just like a little extra thing. That's neat. One app that I do use on iPhone That's a little similar is D clock however the clock doesn't get as large and so if you have a recommendation for a Clock widget that can get really large on iPhone, please let me know in the comments Number eight is Uber.

Since I'm blind, I'm not able to drive and unless I have family or a friend drive me, I don't really have access to paratransit and there's no sidewalks in my area. Unfortunately, they don't believe in sidewalks. I use Uber quite a bit and I also use Uber Eats, which is also accessible through the Uber app. If I could, I would go out and walk and pick up whatever I needed, but Uber is just... super helpful.

It's mostly accessible with a screen reader. It's a little less accessible with large fonts and large display scaling, but it still works and it is just such a useful, useful, very useful app. Boober is available on iOS and Android and you can also do some things on the web as well. Number nine is Instacart. Just like Uber, it's super convenient since I can't drive and this is mostly for groceries.

I've used Instacart in the past and it is mostly accessible. I really wish they had a dark mode but it is available on iOS and Android. You can use it for free but it's if you're going to use it a lot probably a membership would be a good idea.

And number 10, reader apps. I'm gonna cheat a little here and we're actually going to make this a category instead of a specific app. I kind of want to say 11 Labs Reader. Right now, it is completely free which is why I actually really like it. They have great AI voices and you can read web articles, you can just copy and paste text.

Or you can do epubs and maybe you can do pdfs too. They just have really nice voices. But it is limited to a couple tens of thousands of words, I think. 50,000 if I remember correctly is available on iOS and Android. Right now it's free but I'm afraid that in the future it will be a paid service since usually 11 lives is a paid service.

on the web. But there are a lot of different alternatives. One of my favorites on Android is reading mode. You can even use that with a Android accessibility shortcut, which is awesome.

That one just mostly works with articles but it is really useful and also has really great voices. There's also Speech Central which is available on both iOS and Android and has the same basic concept. Share a file or a web page or pdf or something and it will be able to read that out loud for you and you can play that in the background. There's also Speechify but you do have to pay for that one I believe and they have some quote premium voices. Another Android only app that I've also used is AT, like the at symbol, voice aloud reader, which is also a good choice.

The best free voices right now is 11Labs and the Google reading mode. So those are my top 10 apps or category. But there are still so many really great apps that I really like. First of which is BARD.

If you are a NLS patron, National Library Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired, you can use BARD on your mobile app, which is fantastic. You can get audiobooks for free. and listen to them.

It's a really great service, however, they don't usually have the newer books and sometimes you can get really frustrated with the narrator sometimes, especially if it's a series. and they keep changing the narrator each time. That kind of drives me a little nuts, I'm not gonna lie. The BARD app is available on iOS and Android.

Another app that's kind of in the same category is Libby. It's a really great accessible app. It's available on iOS and Android as well and it uses the library services in your state or county. You can get audiobooks or ebooks and There's even one for movies, I believe, and it's a really cool one.

However, there is some limitations. Sometimes there are only a limited amount of copies for a specific book or audiobook, and you have to wait. But if you want some of the newer ones, they're much faster, much faster than Bard to get the newer ones, and even having to wait a few weeks for other people to read it. There's also Bookshare if you're a student, you can get it for free and you can get Braille books or Daisy books and also just read the books using the app. It's available on iOS and Android.

That is a pretty popular one as well. I also really like Audible. I do pay for Audible.

It is pricey but sometimes the book is just not available or you're just not. willing to wait or I'm not willing to wait and Audible is a great choice. Audible is available on iOS, Android, and Amazon Echo devices so you can play it on your Echo devices as well which I have done. Kindle is another app.

It's for ebooks. You can make the text really large. It's accessible with TalkBack or VoiceOver on iOS or Android or Kindle devices and you can even have Kindle books be read aloud by your Amazon Echo device. or the A-L-E-X-A, and it also has the assistive reader, so you can just listen to your book with the Kindle app open.

Since I've kind of mentioned it a few times, the A-L-E-X-A app is also a really great app. You can have that lady, the A lady, do things for you and talk to you and do skills and read books with that app on your phone. Another app that I really like to use is CamScanner.

There's a free version but there's also a paid version for that and it's available on iOS and Android. You can use it to scan documents but what really stands out to me with CamScanner is that it's a really easy app. You can scan documents and read books with it. is how it really enhances the image and a lot of the time it's so much easier to scan documents or even a book with cam scanner and then use magnification to go back and forth and read that text instead of using a magnifier. It just is like really clear and much easier to see.

There's a few other alternatives like Microsoft Lens and even the Google Drive scan feature, however, CamScanner, I feel, does the best with enhancing the image. However, CamScanner is not very accessible for a screen reader. I did send them an email, but they don't seem to be very interested in making it accessible, unfortunately. One app that's only available on iPhones is the OKO app. It uses artificial intelligence and the rear-facing camera on your iPhone to determine whether you should cross a street or not.

Sam from The Blind Life did a great video on it. If you want to learn more, go check out his video. Like I mentioned before, in my area we don't really have sidewalks so I haven't had the opportunity to test this out. On Android, again, I also really like Nova Launcher which is a basically replaces your home screen and you just have more controls. There's more shortcuts.

It's pretty accessible and I just like it better than the Pixel or even the Samsung launcher. There's also Button Mapper. I use this every single day. I have it set to long pressing the volume down to open WeZoom. Since I can't tie Wezoom to a specific accessibility shortcut, this is really helpful for me to really quickly access Wezoom.

And then I have pressing and holding the volume up for seeing AI. Maybe one day I'll make a video about button mapper. But I find it a really great and useful app. Earlier I mentioned Wezoom and the iPhone magnifier. On Samsung, they have a Samsung magnifier and on Pixel, there is a Pixel magnifier as well.

There are some apps that I use but I wouldn't say is my favorite. Amazon, I use it a lot because I use Amazon a lot. However, their app is really frustrating because there's no dark mode and so much of the text gets cut off if you're using larger display scaling as well as larger font sizes. There's also Walmart which has the same issue. I used to use Instacart but like Walmart is cheaper and that's what my family is using right now.

And it's just... really really frustrating for somebody visually impaired. There's also DoorDash instead of using Uber Eats, but again it doesn't have a dark mode and honestly I just end up using Uber Eats because it's an easier experience for me.

Google Lookout is another one that I occasionally use but I intentionally did not add it to the top 10. It's because they updated it and it's just the interface. I don't like the interface and while the OZR is faster, than say in vision or seeing AI or that at least that's my experience. It's just most of the time not really worth it for me. One cool feature they do have is the food labels.

If I'm at the grocery store, I can just use the camera and point it at the freezers or the boxes and it will announce what it sees. without having to find and scan the barcode which I guess is pretty neat. I could keep going but I'm gonna stop here.

Those are my top 10 with just a little bit of extra. I hope that you enjoyed this video. It was really fun for me and again if you have your own recommendations or your own favorites leave those in the comments and share with the community.

If you like this video or found it helpful give it a thumbs up below Don't forget to subscribe and if you would like to support my channel and what I do here, consider becoming a Patreon or YouTube member or just sharing this video. And you can also check out the Amazon storefront, amazon.com slash shop slash carry on accessibility. Thank you so much for watching.

You guys are awesome and I will catch you in the next one.

Transcript for:Top Accessibility Apps for the Visually Impaired

Transcript for:
Top Accessibility Apps for the Visually Impaired