Accessible Apps for iOS - Apple iPhone and iPad
Patrick AndradeShare This Article
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ACB Link: Free
With ACB Link, you can 1) Access valuable resources offered by the American Council of the Blind. 2) Get push notifications designed to keep you in the know about late-breaking news items of value to ACB members and friends. 3) Easily connect to the state and special-interest affiliates of the American Council of the Blind via the app's affiliate tab. 4) Be informed ACB Radio's various channels via the radio tab. 5) Play ACB podcasts on demand so you never again have to miss information. 6) Gain valuable information that focuses on dealing with sight loss.
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Aira: Free & Subs.
Aira is a service that connects blind and low-vision people to highly trained, remotely-located agents. Through an app on your smartphone, Aira delivers instant access to visual information at the touch of a button. Free to download, but pricing is set by the amount of minutes per month. Aira is free to use with Aira Access offers within the app and in a variety of locations that they are partnered with, such as Walgreens, airports, federal buildings, & some Starbucks!
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Alarmed ~ Reminders + Timers: Free
A reminder and timer app that is alarmingly great and works well with VoiceOver!
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Apple Books: Free
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Apple Home: Built-In
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Audible: Free Trial & Subs.
Listen to audiobooks, podcasts, and Audible Originals with your Amazon account. With two different membership plans to choose from (Plus and Premium Plus), you can listen to endless content or pick titles to keep in your library.
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Audio Bible God’s Word Spoken: Free
An audio version of the World English Bible on the iPhone and iPad for iOS 8.0+.
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Audio Game Hub: Free & Subs.
Set of experimental arcade games that use audio as their primary interface, making them accessible for both sighted and non-sighted users. Free to download, subs for access to all games for $7.99/month, $14.99 for 3 months, or 34.99 for 12 months.
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Audm: Free Trial and Subs.
Audm presents the world’s best long form journalism, read aloud word-for-word by celebrated audiobook narrators. Listen to many hours’ worth of new stories every week, from publications including: The NYT, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, WIRED, Rolling Stone, The New Republic, New York Magazine, Buzzfeed News, Vanity Fair, The Daily Beast, and more.
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Ava: Free & Subs.
Provides deaf or hard-of-hearing people instant captions to follow any conversation and be included. The perfect companion to making your conversations accessible. Free to use for occasional use, $14.99 monthly, or $9.99/month for a year.
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Aware Audible Wayfinding: Free
A mobile app to help people who are visually impaired explore their surroundings independently and provide indoor directions and descriptions to help you confidently navigate public buildings. This app can even help you navigate The Chicago Lighthouse and all of its various departments!
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BARD Mobile: Free
This app allows people registered with their local NLS library to download audio books from the NLS BARD library (which contains nearly 50,000 books and magazines) onto their phone. Features simple to use navigation & playback controls.
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Be My Eye: Free
Utilizes your camera to allow a sighted person to see what the camera is looking at and tell you what it is. Simply point the camera at something you want identified and it will connect with a sighted volunteer. They can then see through your devices camera and tell you what it is pointed at! The app also has various organizations partnered as resources, providing an easy method of contact through the Be My Eyes app. Free to download and use.
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BeeLine Reader: $4.99
For iPhone and iPad. Allows you to read faster and more easily by displaying text using eye-guiding color gradients. This is only beneficial to those who can distinguish between colors but have trouble finding the next line of their text. To try it out, check out www.BeeLineReader.com
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Blind Square: $39.99
Blind Square is a navigation app made with the blind and visually impaired in mind. If you want to know what is around you start up the Blind Square app, and using your devices GPS and compass Blind Square can tell you points of interest around you. You can change the radius of the area you are interested in or search through categories to find what you are after. Once you have found a place of interest then you can do a number of things such as pull up their phone number, get navigation directions with clock face directions and distance or open your favorite navigation app. Additionally, you can download the free Blind Square Event app for indoor navigation utilization at participating event spaces, such as conferences.
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Boop Light Detector: Free
Detect levels of light and interpret the information using sound, allowing blind users to know whether the lights are on or off. Open the app, point your phone towards a light source, and listen and feel as your phone changes tone and frequency of vibration while getting closer to the light.
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Blind Abilities: Free
Blind Abilities produces podcasts and blogs dealing with accessibility, technologies, devices, and enhancing the opportunities in the job market for the Blind, Visually Impaired, and DeafBlind.
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Braille Academy: Free
Effectively learn, practice, and test Unified English Braille with a unique method. Learn while playing as this app strategically teaches Braille of all 26 letters of the English alphabet, numbers 0-9, punctuation marks, special symbols, contractions, wordsigns, groupsigns, and short-form words.
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Cash Reader Bill Identifier: Free & Subs.
This app is free to use as a money reading app on the iPhone/iPad (iOS 11.0+) for low denomination bills such as $1, $2, and $5. Point your phone’s camera at almost any banknote in the world and hear the value instantly. A full subscription covers all available banknotes and possible denominations for $0.99/month, $9.99/year, or $24.99 for a lifetime.
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Capti Voice: Free Trial & Subs.
Listen to documents, news, books, and more with free features such as text-to-speech, offline access to saved books, documents, and web articles, VoiceOver compatibility, and text and font color customization. Users can access and listen to plenty of text from Bookshare, Web Browsers, Email Attachments, etc. Premium plans are $1.99/month or $9.99 for 6-months.
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Claro MagX: Free
A magnifier app on the iPhone/iPad (iOS 11.0+) with 16 levels of magnification (up to 16x), freeze mode, and visual features such as full color mode, two color mode, and gray scale mode as well as color contrast inversion. This app is VoiceOver compatible & can be paired with Apple TV to transmit your magnified image onto a larger screen.
Additionally, download the Claro MagVR app to pair with an Apple Watch when the MagVR companion app is downloaded. Using the iOS compatible gamepad, you can control MagVR using the Apple Watch to change the display modes.
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ColoredEye: Free
This app identifies the colors from your camera or can identify colors from a saved photo. Color identifiers are highly dependent on lighting.
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Cortana: Free
Utilize as your personal productivity assistant with your Microsoft applications. Cortana can help you manage your calendar, send emails or texts, find information, manage lists, and give you reminders.
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Easy Reader: Free
An accessible reading app for people with low vision or blindness. In this reader, you can open your own DAISY, Epub, or text books, or copy text from anywhere and hear it be read back to you. In addition, you can boost reading comfort with change in color contrast, text size, and highlights. This app is fully optimized for usage with VoiceOver and Braille displays.
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Envision: Free Trial & Subs.
A fast and reliable OCR app that speaks out the visual world. Use your phone camera to scan any piece of text, your surroundings, objects, people, or products and have them read out to you. Envision is free to install and offers a 14 day trial to experience all of the apps features. Thereafter, you must purchase a $1.99 monthly subscription, $19.99 annual subscription, or $99.99 for a lifetime subscription.
Download Envision Ally, a free app meant to be downloaded by the people in your life to assist you with tasks over video call from your Envision app or glasses.
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GoodMaps Explore: Free
Discover the world with this indoor and outdoor navigation app for people who are blind or visually impaired. The app stays aware of your location, providing you with automatic updates about your immediate surroundings. Receive notifications about your current destination, nearest room, street, or points of interest.
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Instapaper: Free & Subs.
The simplest way to save and store articles for reading: offline, on-the-go, anytime, anywhere, perfectly formatted with a clean and uncluttered experience in addition to enhancing the standard reading experience with features like text-to-speech for your favorite articles. Instapaper offers a premium subscription for $2.99/month or $29.99/year.
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Jumpy Cat: Free & Subs.
Get motivated and burn some calories by creating your own unique personalized workouts with detailed voice guidance in each and every workout video. This audio coach makes following new exercises and workouts a breeze for people who are blind or low vision! To enable detailed voice description, go to the More menu within the app and set Voice Instructions from Basic to Detailed. Subscribe for $1.99/month to unlock the 15,000 various workouts.
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Keeble Accessible Keyboard: $24.99
iOS keyboard that allows users with fine motor challenges, switch users, and users with visual impairements to type in almost any app. Various features include word prediction, timing options, Select on Release, Select on Dwell, auditory feedback, as well as full support for Switch Control and VoiceOver. This app can be downloaded on the iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch with iOS 12.4 or later.
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Kindle: Free Trial & Subs.
Utilize your Amazon prime membership and turn your iPhone or iPad into a book you can read anytime and anywhere, with customizable text size, font type, margins, text alignment, background colors, and orientation. Zoom in on high definition color images in Kindle books, magazines, comics, or manga.
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KNFB Reader: $99.99
The KNFB Reader is a much anticipated app that has lightning fast and accurate OCR capabilities to turn your device into a reading machine! Using the KNFB Reader app you can take a photograph of a page of text and have it read aloud to you, Making sure you capture what’s needed is easy with automatic page detection and a field of view report and tilt control. Has a multi-page mode for books.
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Lazarillo – Accessible GPS: Free
A GPS app that incorporates mobility tools while using audio messages to tell you about a nearby place, the street you’re walking on, the upcoming intersections, and more! This app can run in the background while you use other apps and features of your phone, while announcing places around you while you more.
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LetSeeApp: Free
Offers a free money reader, plastic card recognizer, & a light measurement tool. For the card recognizer, you must register your own cards within the app where it is saved so the app can act as a way to differentiate between your various credit cards.
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Live Transcribe: Free Trial and Subs.
Live captioning for Deaf and Hard of Hearing in 50+ languages. Built for simplicity and ease of use. Make the text as big as you’d like and focus on what’s being said with full screen text capture. You can even remember what was said by sending or saving transcripts to messages or notes. Try for free with a 7-day free trial. Subscribe monthly at $4.99 or yearly at $49.99.
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MBraille: Free
A mobile braille keyboard that allows you to type, edit, or send tweets and text messages using contracted or uncontracted English braille for free. With the full version, users can call contacts or phone numbers, send email, add calendar entries, and use MBraille as a third party keyboard.
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Magnifier: Built-In
Access your iPhone and iPad’s built-in magnifier by going to Settings > Accessibility > Magnifier > On. Once enabled, drag the Magnifier app from the App Library to your home screen, or you can add it as an accessibility shortcut. Enhance what you see with flashlight, photo-freeze, brightness, color contrast & filters, and zoom controls.
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Microsoft Lens: Free with Office 365 Subscription
A pocket PDF scanner with integrated OCR through an Immersive Reader feature that can read out the text from the images in text sizes ranging from 14 to 64pt with various contrast colors available. Scanned text and images can also be saved as PDFs, into OneNote, OneDrive, PowerPoint, or Word as an OCR document.
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Microsoft SoundScape: Free
Place audio cues and labels in 3D space such that they sound like they are coming from the direction of the points of interest, parks, roads, and other features of your surroundings, hoping to assist you in navigating with spatial audio. This is only available on iPhone and requires iOS 13.0+.
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Myfinder: Free
Myfinder AI provides audio descriptions of objects and navigation guidance towards them. It reads out text and describes a scene in the frame. With a newer phone, myfinder AI assistant provides a digital cane to blind users, notifying them of obstacles on the way. Myfinder can also connect the blind user to a sighted volunteer right away
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Nav by ViaOpta
Take the stress out of navigating your surroundings with Nav by ViaOpta, a navigation app designed to help those with low vision reach their desired destination with voice-guided turn-by-turn navigation. Use this app to give you your current position as a street address, insert waypoints into your journey for a more efficient route, list the intersections around you, alongside their distances from you, set favorite locations by category, and use the integrated Be My Eyes service.
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NFB Newsline with KNFB Reader Basic: Free
Access to over 300 newspapers is provided by this app, which can read newspapers out loud using Apple’s Voiceover feature. KNFB Reader Basic is integrated within the app. Registration with NFB Newsline is necessary to use the app (nfbnewsline.org)
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Otter.ai: Free & Subs.
Record, transcribe, share, and turn meetings in searchable notes. Otter.ai records and takes meeting notes for you in real time for 600 minutes free every month (English only). For a Pro subscription, you can have 6,000 minutes of transcription per month.
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Outread – Speed Reading: Free Trial & Subs.
With this app you can speed read websites, eBooks, and documents by helping you focus on small chunks of text at a time. Either follow the highlighter along the page or keep the text centered with one word shown at a time, otherwise known as Rapid Serial Visual Presentation mode. Subscribe to this app for $4.99/month, $29.99/year, or $89.99 once for a lifetime.
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OverDrive: Free
Borrow eBooks, audiobooks, and streaming video from your library utilizing the OverDrive app on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch. With a valid account from a participating library, school, or other institution, users can choose from and engage with different titles with ease across mobile devices.
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Pen to Print – Handwriting OCR: Free & Subs.
Pen to Print is the first handwriting to text OCR scanner converting handwritten notes into digital text available for edits, search, and storage in any digital platform.
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Prizmo Go: Free
Quickly grab text with your camera and have it recognized in the blink of an eye, allowing you to interact with it thereafter. Easily compatible with VoiceOver and offers spoken guidance before shooting.
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QR Blind: Free
This QR Code technology is totally accessible with VoiceOver and allows you to create simple text QR codes or contacts, events, and wifi configuration. Create labels using 6 different label formats, associate custom text or audio to each QR code that will be used, create and fill sheets with previously saved labels, and share a PDF version of the sheet or print it out.
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Qur’an Audio: Free
An audio app for the Qur’an for iPhone and iPad for iOS 9.0+.
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ReBokeh: Free for Limited Time
Spot your friends from across the room and participate in visual activities with this app, which is customizable to your personal needs with unique filter options and image stabilization – making it easy to read from long distances. This app was designed by the visually impaired for the visually impaired community. Adjust contrast, exposure, color inversion, and more!
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RedShelf: Free with Account
An eReader companion app providing on or offline access to your textbooks located in your RedShelf account. RedShelf is compatible with VoiceOver and offers the option for text to be read aloud. An active RedShelf account is required.
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ReVision Fitness: Free & Subs.
An audio based fitness program designed to be accessible for both blind and sighted users, to teach all you will need to know about fitness. Each exercise lesson is designed by blind personal trainer and 4 time Paralympic athlete Tyler Merren, with lessons meticulously described using clock face directions, reference points, and step by step instructions to teach proper mechanics for any exercise. All workouts can be accessed with a simple monthly subscription of $5.99 or yearly sub of $59.99.
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RightHear – Blind Assistant: Free
RightHear is a virtual accessibility assistant that helps users to easily orient themselves in new or casual environments. You can use this app as a navigation tool for navigating while outdoors and also use the app indoors where participating locations have RightHear audio signage. This app also allows for users to open their favorite recognition tool such as SeeingAI, BeMyEyes, or EnvisionAI from within the app for whenever you need added assistance.
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Say Color: Free
Speaks the name of the nearest color in the center of a camera preview pane using speech synthesis. Can also show and speak the three RGB 255 numbers. Using this app can give you a more exact color reading than many other apps out there.
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ScripTalk Mobile: Free
Use this app to read your ScripTalk Talking Labels, which are RFID tags attached to medication containers by pharmacies participating in the ScriptAbility accessibility program to provide those who are blind or low vision with audible prescription info.
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SeeingAI: Free
This app utilizes your camera to read short text you hold in front of it; to read a full document it captures a picture of; to scan a barcode for product identification; and identifies people, currency, objects in your surroundings, and colors. It is also one of the only apps with capability to convert handwritten material to audio format.
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Seeing Assistant Home: Free
Operational by voice command. Allows users to utilize color recognition, light detection, bar/QR code scanning and generation, text detection, & magnification.
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Sero (formerly iBlind Radio): Free
Has radio stations, podcasts, and reading services of special interest to blind and visually impaired persons accessible on iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV. Without a subscription ($5.99/month), you can only access a small subset of Sero audio content, and no community features such as forums or voice chat.
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Siri: Built-In
Built-in to each and every Apple device, use Siri as your personal assistant to get things done just by asking. Quickly check facts, set alarms, get directions, preview your calendar, read your text messages, listen to your voicemails, do calculations, or translate a phrase. It’s as simple as asking, and there’s a whole lot more to explore.
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Speaking Email: Free and Subs.
Makes email easy to use for those with visual impairment, blindness, stroke, dyslexia, or motor dysfunction. Designed to be used without needing to see or touch the screen, Speaking Email works as a fully voice operated email app. Note: a sighted assistant or VO is required to sign into your email account and configure preferences.
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Spectrum Access: Free
This free app contains Audio Description content for various movies and a few TV shows that can be downloaded and then synced seamlessly as your media plays.
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Speechify – Text to Speech: Free & Subs.
A text-to-speech audio reader that can turn reading material such as books, documents, and articles into interactive audiobooks. Scan physical book pages with your camera, import internet articles from your mobile browser, or open a PDF to listen to at up to 900 words per minute. Premium voices with natural human inflection can be purchased as a sub based fee on monthly, quarterly, or annual plans.
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Spotlight Text for iPad: $29.99
Spotlight Text is an app that helps visually impaired people read ebooks. It links with Bookshare and you can view any book from Bookshare using the app. The App allows you to magnify the text much more than you would be able to do with the tablet normally and change the contrast. More interestingly there is a ‘teleprompter’ mode and a ‘marquee’ mode. Teleprompter scrolls the text vertically and marquee horizontally, similar to Prodigi modes. Good for eccentric viewing. Bookshare membership for Adults - $25 set up fee - $50 a year. Children and students free.
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SuperVision+ Magnifier: Free
The only app on the market offering live image stabilization capability for highly magnified images. From reading small print at a near distance to seeing signs at a far distance, SuperVision+ Magnifier should be your go-to app for seeing better.
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Talk Compass
This compass app lets you know the cardinal and orginal directions by voice. You can adjust the speaking rate, volume, and sound effects within the app settings.
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Talking Typer
The Talking Typer, designed for Blind/Visually-Impaired students, is an accessible typing and computer keyboard tutorial app with a keyboard game to help increase speech and accuracy in a fun environment! Learn to type or improve your skills with drills, practice, lessons, keyboard explorer, and an entertaining game.
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TapTapSee: Free
This app lets you take a photo of an object or your surrounding environment and reads aloud the results, when you have VoiceOver enabled. To take a picture hold your device around 12 inches from the object to be photographed and double tap. After a short wait it will tell you what you’re looking at. If VoiceOver is not enabled, only one tap is necessary to take a picture and the results are displayed at the bottom of the screen.
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The Talking Calculator: Free
A basic 4 function calculator that speaks mathematical functions as they are entered and calculated. Speech options are available in both English and Spanish with the option to change the speech rate. This app can be found on the iPhone and iPad (iOS 12.1+), with a dark mode feature for iOS 13+.
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Vhista: Free
Designed to help the blind as a recognition tool for identifying objects such as cars, rooms, food, landscapes, and much more. This app is optimized to work with VoiceOver on the iPhone and iPad.
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ViaOpta Daily: Free
ViaOpta Daily is designed as a personal assistant and can be used to: scan and recognize real world objects or an object’s color, read out written text to the user from documents, packaging or other items, recognize and read out the value of banknotes, and provide users with live support from sighted volunteers via an integration with BeMyEyes.
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VisionSim: Free
Uses the camera in the iPad/iPhone along with digital filters to allow the user to experience the symptoms of a particular eye disease, such are advanced macular degeneration, cataracts, glaucoma, corneal edema, diabetic retinopathy, homonymous hemianopia, macular degeneration, retinal detachment, and retinitis pigmentosa. Detailed information about each eye disease is also provided.
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VisKey: Free Trial & Subscription
VisKey is the Visible Keyboard, easy to use accessible keyboard that doesn’t sacrifice modern features for large text preview and good contrast. You can trial VisKey for 3 days or subscribe to use it for one year for $2.99.
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Voice Dictation – Speechy Lite: Free & Subs.
A quick way to transcribe your words into text without needing to touch a keyboard, by using voice dictation. In addition to transcribing your words, you can also record and save your voice recordings to listen later and sync your text and audio files to a variety of apps. For $4.49/month, you can have unlimited recognition duration.
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Voice Dream Suite: $29.99
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Voice Dream Reader: $19.99
A text to speech reader that turns any document and ebook into audio. Containing a variety of tools to assist with reading styles, this app words with numerous formats and contains a built-in scanner for scanning paper documents with the camera for text-to-speech.
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Voice Dream Writer: $9.99
Offers text-to-speech proofreading, phonetic (searching “inuf” and receiving “enough) and meaning search (i.e search “Fast Africa Cat” and get the result of “Cheetah”), and an active outline to assist with writing structure.
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Voice Dream Scanner: $5.99
Scan paper documents with the camera and recognize text. Listen using built-in text-to-speech. Save and export, with unlimited usage after first purchase. This scanner includes a sound that represents the amount of recognizable text in the cameras field of view in real time. Works well with Voice Dream Reader, and can be accessed within Reader once purchased.
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Voice Dream Extra Voices: $5.99
Adds two of the best English voices, Sharon and James, to the Voice Dream Reader.
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Voice OCR: Free & Subs
Meant to help you quickly read items like product labels, magazine pages, mail, books, and more. This app features a variety of different voices to choose from and features voice control. Simply say “capture” to snap a picture and “read” to start processing the image with the guidance of a scan tone that gets louder or softer depending on the placement, tilt, and orientation of your phone relative to the document. The louder the scan tone, the better the visibility of the document. Users have 100 free photos each month or unlimited access for $9.99, and only on iPhone.
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VoiceOver: Built-In
The screen reading software built-in to the iPad and iPhone to assist users who are blind or low vision in utilizing their devices. Once turned on, VoiceOver will speak items on the screen. VoiceOver has specific commands and functions for navigating and using the device that can take time and practice. You can turn VoiceOver on/off using Siri. Just say, “Hey Siri, turn on VoiceOver.” You can also access VoiceOver and its settings by opening Settings>Accessibility>VoiceOver.
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VoiceReader Speech Central: Free & Pro Version
This app offers PDF text-to-speech support without interruption by footers, headers, footnotes, and long web links. This app also offers text-to-speech support for the web as well as various document and e-book formats. Use this app to get an overview of various newspaper headlines for the day.
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WayAround: Free
An NFC (near-field communication) Tag reader/writer for WayTags, which can store 2K characters of text, multiple hyperlinks, and more. Put WayTags (sold separately) on your clothes, medication, etc. and then have your smartphone quickly read and write information with just a tap, no camera necessary thanks to your phones built in NFC reader.
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WebOutLoud: Free
A text-to-speech web reader on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac. With premium voices, offline capability, desktop integration, dark mode, iCloud sync, and ability to save articles for later, WebOutLoud is a leader website reader. This app is not limited to websites, but can read PDFs, scanned documents, and other text on your device; just open and navigate to any web page and touch play.
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WeWalk – Orientation/Mobility App: Free
An accessible navigation and exploration app that pairs with the WeWalk Smart Cane, or can be utilized alongside your everyday white cane. In this app, you can receive O&M friendly walking directions as you navigate to your desired destination. Along the way, you can view public transportation stops near you along with their arrival times and receive alerts when you are reaching your bus or train stop so that you’re never left rushing for the exit.
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Zinio – Magazine News App: Free
A magazine-reader application on the iPhone/iPad (iOS 11.0+) and computer that has nearly every major magazine available for single-issue purchase or by subscription within the app. You can easily zoom in on any column of text or picture, and you can hit a single button to have the article reformatted to allow for enlarging the text, changing the color contrast, and having articles read aloud.
Resources
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Hadley School for the Blind’s iFocus Series
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The Chicago Lighthouse’s Technology Helpdesk
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An in depth Macworld article on how to use Siri
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Free workshops run by AT&T (you do not need to be an AT&T customer to attend)
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Verizon Resource Center for People with Disabilities
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The Chicago Lighthouse Tools for Living Store offers iPhone and iPad training! Training on a device is $40/hour with the first 30 minutes free of charge.
If you are 55 or older, contact Noreen Costello at 1-847-510-2500 or by email at Noreen.Costello@chicagolighthouse.org for hourly training – FREE OF CHARGE! A wait is likely for those who wish to take part in free training. Please inquire for potential availability.
If you are under the age of 55, please call Patrick Andrade (312-997-3649) or Michelle Fiocchi (847-510-2061) to schedule iPad or iPhone training or accessibility help.
