Hello: I am a trustee of the Visually Impaired Sailing Association (VISA) here in the United Kingdom. WE have just had a talking compass app developed to assist our sailors to steer to a heading and would welcome feedback from others on the app and to know if you find it helpful for sailing, other watersports, or anything else?
VISA Talking Compass allows you to set a target heading and then alerts you to deviation from that heading with tones or spoken directions. There are a number of user adjustable settings including level of precision and frequency of deviation announcements . It is simple to adjust the target heading while in use.
The ap concept was developed by and tested by blind people including myself and is intended to be used with Voiceover . If using tones mode you may prefer to mute speech or can use it without Voiceover.
You will find the app easier to understand and to use if you are familiar with compass navigation . The app is not a route-finder and is not link to map data. It does not require a network connection.
It is free and available on the App Store
https://apps.apple.com/id/app/visa-sailing-talking-compass/id6777973857
An Android version is currently being tested, if you are interested in tah reply here and I can arrange to have you added to that.
If you would like to know more about the Visually Impaired Sailing Association our site is www.VISA-gb.org.uk
By Adrian H, 8 July, 2026
Forum
iOS and iPadOS
Comments
Direction
Can you use it to figure if you are going n, s, e or w? Would like it for that. How much is the app?
Re directions
The app is free. You can use it to tell you which compass baring you are facing at any time. The information is given in degrees e.g. 90, 180 etc. it doesn't say north, east, south, west as that is not accurate enough for the purpose for which it was designed.
Adrian H
Thanks, was hoping it did so, want to be able to know if I am facing, n, w, e, or s. or SE, SW, NE or NW and so on.
magnetic/true declination?
Hi, thanks for this. VISA sounds really cool. Any Compass reading digital or analog is useful and in fact dangerous to trust if magnetic declination is not accounted for. Magnetic declination is the difference between magnetic north and true north (maps always indicate true north) this declination depends both on latitude and longitude of the users current location. When your app reports the absolute heading in degrees between 0 to 359, does it automatically apply the magnetic declination based on the users GPS coordinates? If he has great. If not then the absolute heading feature not only becomes useless because it forces one to constantly do mental math for every reading but can also as aforementioned become a little bit risky for the less experienced. for reference, the default native Apple compass app can automatically apply magnetic declination based on my GPS coordinates if I check that box in the Compass settings of the Apple native Compass app. Thank you again.
Bug report and update on declinatio
Still would like Adrian to verify and confirm this but upon comparing to the Apple native Compass app on my iPhone, it appears by default magnetic declination is indeed applied based on the users GPS coordinate wherever they might be in the world. True? And here is a bug. I start the app and just want to see my heading in degrees, the app beautifully in real time without any latency your lag updates my heading which is great. Now if I start navigation by setting a particle heading and then end journey", and then come back to the main screen of the app, my absolute heading stops changing and it's stuck at whatever the last absolute heading was during the previous journey. No matter how much I rotate my phone! This is a major bug because the only work around is to completely exit the app and then restart the app at which point it resumes giving live real time absolute heading in degrees on the main screen. Is this in your bug report list to be fixed and if so what maybe the timeline please? Thank you.
RE bug and declination
Hi: AS you have discovered the app uses your on-device technology and so inherits the capability of the compass. For the purpose for which the app was developed declination is not important because the primary purpose is to allow you to set a target , and then to be notified when you deviate from that e.g. to know that you are, 1, 3, 10, 45 degrees off course. In that respect whether the heading you set as a target is accurate or true is not very important. Although of course if someone asks you to steer a course of 10 degrees you can only do that if your compass and their agree on which direction is 10 degrees. Regardng the bug, I havne't come across this before, what device and IOS verson are you suing? Do you experience the issue issue if yoe pause and ressume navigation, or only if you end it? And do you have the issue using default settings, or have you adjsuted for example the level of accuracy?