5 Most Effective Apps for Blind People to Use and Which Technologies They Use

In the current technology-focused society, the accessibility issue has become the main concern among app developers. People who are blind or visually impaired can nowadays count on various applications to help them when traveling, and even to get some entertainment. The following are five of the most popular apps for the blind community, and the main thing that which technologies do they and which one is good for which user.

1. Be My Eyes

This is an app which is used by blind people all over the world and the most successful community ever. This app was launched in 2013 and became a huge success. If we talk about the technologies they use, mainly they rely on the community of volunteers. Let’s say a blind person opens the app (Be My Eyes), a blind person then takes help in anything through a "video call" from any volunteer around the world. Recently, they also leveraged the power of AI, which has different modes like checking the color of the couch or reading anything in the shopping mart. AI will help you as a chatbot.

2. Blind Nav

Developed by Microsoft, Blind Nav is a free open-source app that helps users navigate their surroundings just with the help of the mobile phone’s camera and the availability of the internet. This app mainly has three main modes: “Navigation Mode”, “Assistant Mode”, and “Reading Mode”. From the modes' names, we can easily understand their purposes. This app can truly make a blind person independent in their life. Blind Nav also leverages the Gemini AI to submit frames from the user’s camera and then provide them to the AI as input, which then creates prompts based on its training. Blind Nav is currently not available on the Apple Play Store, but you can download the app from the website itself as this app is open-source, so developers can also contribute to the project.

3. Seeing AI

Seeing AI is an app developed by Microsoft, which uses artificial intelligence technology to provide assistance to blind people and low-vision users by narrating the world around them. It’s designed to quickly and conveniently provide visual information via a smartphone camera, making it an essential daily help. The app has different sections, each with its own feature, e.g., text reading from images, currency reader, object and scene recognition, facial recognition, and many more. Seeing AI employs cutting-edge artificial intelligence and machine learning systems to analyze and make sense of visual data obtained from the smartphone's camera.

4. Voice Dream Reader

The Voice Dream Reader is an application manufactured by Voice Dream, and it is widely accepted among incredible people who need assistance in reading due to disabilities, among which are the blind. Users can easily convert written text to spoken words using this cutting-edge text-to-speech (TTS) tool, thus receiving audible information instead. The app is very pleasant to use and has a smooth UI. Despite the relatively costly subscription fee, it offers a free version for those who cannot pay.

Voice Dream Reader arms itself with the latest text-to-speech (TTS) technology. The high-quality text-to-speech engines, which turn text into human-sounding speech, are the feature of this app. It supports a variety of TTS engines, allowing users to choose from both built-in options and third-party voices for a diverse selection of voice options.

Moreover, the app utilizes OCR technology, exposing the option of recognizing text from images, scanned documents, and even photos of printed material. With this feature, increased accessibility is assured as users can now listen to contents that are not digitally formatted.

In sum, Voice Dream Reader gives blind users the necessary technology to read and consume written information in their preferred format, hence increasing the accessibility of information and contributing to better reading for them.

5. Aira

Aira is an amazing company that offers many different solutions. Aira has manufactured devices that can easily attach to glasses, allowing users to navigate around, but it also provides a mobile app. Aira has smart glasses and smartphone apps along with a network of trained human agents to provide wearable technology solutions. Their devices can also recognize gestures and perform tasks based on them. The user's device streams a live video to the agent, who then describes what he sees and helps as needed. The technology conveniently comes with GPS support, allowing agents to instruct users with exact location data.