VizLens 4+
Appliance Reader
Anhong Guo
-
- Free
Screenshots
Description
VizLens is an iOS app that assists visually impaired people to access everyday appliances, such as microwaves, washing machines, and more, that are not labeled with raised dots or Braille.
Key Features:
- Virtual Interaction: Capture an image of your appliance's interface, and VizLens will create a virtual layout of the buttons relative to each other. Simply touch a button to hear its corresponding text.
- Live Camera Interaction: The innovative feature of VizLens, this view allows you to aim your camera at the appliance interface and use your finger to point at buttons. The app will then audibly speak the text of the buttons you're pointing at.
Using VizLens is simple and intuitive:
- Take a photo of your appliance's interface
- Let the app identify and extract button text
- Choose between Virtual Interaction View and Live Camera View to interact with your appliance
VizLens is committed to providing visually impaired people with greater independence and ease of use when interacting with everyday appliances. If you have any questions or feedback, please email us at humanailab-vizlens@umich.edu.
What’s New
Version 1.1.1
- Improve image capture user experience
- Bug fixes
Ratings and Reviews
Feedback about app's friendliness for blind users
This is an awesome idea and I really want this app to succeed. I will be sending my feedback to the developer as well.
There are very few instructions on how to actually use the virtual and picture mode. The "take picture” functionality, in particular, needs some improvement. It is hard to expect a blind person to take a good picture of the appliance on their own. So, I think, an auto-take feature should be available. . Whenever I tried taking a picture on my own, I would get a message saying that the picture is of a bad quality.
In other words, so far I was not able to take advantage of this app.
Promising and mostly effective
OK let’s give this an honest review. Taking a picture is possible with voiceover enabled, you have to have a steady hand but it will work. The app works mostly as advertised with a few caveats. First it only recognizes text and numbers it will not identify icons, second it doesn’t have a feature to enable you to label the icons, so it basically throws out any images it doesn’t recognize. That’s really the largest problem here. If we were able to identify the unknown icons with custom text, this would be a much higher rating than the three stars.
Accessibility feedback
This app is a prety cool idea so i am giving it 3 out of. 5 stars because as a voiceover user this app needs improvement.
1. I had to disable voiceover to take a picture of my applience
2. The accuracy could be better as far as detecting the labeled buttons.
3. Explore mode needs improvement because i couldnt get an accurate read when pointing my finger at each labeled button
Overall great app it just needs some accessibility improvements as i mentioned.
App Privacy
The developer, Anhong Guo, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy.
Data Linked to You
The following data may be collected and linked to your identity:
- Contact Info
- User Content
- Usage Data
- Sensitive Info
Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More
Information
- Seller
- Anhong Guo
- Size
- 19.7 MB
- Category
- Lifestyle
- Compatibility
-
- iPhone
- Requires iOS 14.0 or later.
- iPad
- Requires iPadOS 14.0 or later.
- iPod touch
- Requires iOS 14.0 or later.
- Apple Vision
- Requires visionOS 1.0 or later.
- Languages
-
English
- Age Rating
- 4+
- Copyright
- © 2023 University of Michigan
- Price
- Free