OneStep Reader

the app is also compatible with ios7 at time of writing, so you don't have to be on 8 to use it.

interesting that its not very usable on the plus I would have thought that would have been the absolutely best phone to use it on with its new image stabilization. very strange.

This app sounds interesting, but at $100, unless there is a way to try it first, I'm not willing to gamble that much money on an app I haven't seen.

I'm having trouble getting documents into focus. I hit the view report button, and it says something like, "top edges visible rotated 2 degrees clockwise," so I move the phone slightly to the right, and then there's no report available. Also, when it says both the top and bottom edges are visible at 0 degrees, taking a picture only produces part of the document.

Does anyone know what's going wrong? Thanks.

I am not sure what the thing to do is when the top and bottom edges are visible, but about the field report, that feature is very unreliable, and I am on ios 7.1.2, speech often fails after a few field of view reports, I have reported it to them, and I would encourage others who also agree to do the same thing.

I've noticed the speech also fails sometimes when attempting to actually OCR things. Sometimes it works itself out, and sometimes you have to dismiss the app and relaunch.

I contacted them Friday after posting here. Their response was to send me a copy of the documentation (already found within the app) and to tell me to read the suggestions for alignment (already done). I've even tried using the tilt guidance and turning on the automatic picture, but that has only been successful once.

That explains why it doesn't take the pic even when the field report says it's perfect.

I've tried this app, and it works quite well on my iPhone 5S. I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a good OCR app.

Until people get their heads on straight, the KNFB app is worthless. Why? They were stupid enough to not get their Android version out at the same time. This is not right all. They should make it for all since in order to improve accessibility, things need to be available on both platforms at the same time!

Hello Jordan,

With all do respect, do you use an iOS device?

The reason I'm asking is that I'm trying to understand: why does KNFBReader not being available on Android make the iOS app worthless? I'm really trying to see the other side here, but I fail to understand how one has anything to do with the other. It would be like me saying a very good Android app was worthless simply because its developer did not also release it on iOS. A good app is a good app, regardless of which platform it runs on. Developer dedication, to whatever app and whatever platform, is to be appreciated.

Your attitudes notwithstanding, a huge majority of the people who have posted here about KNFBReader find it to be a very worthwhile app. I know I do.

This app has quickly become one of my most important productivity and daily living tools. The simplicity, speed and accuracy with which KNFB Reader handles most of my daily OCR tasks is a relief. Where I used to schedule a block of time to sit down and work my way through a stack of mail, receipts or other paperwork using a combination of Prizmo on the iPhone and FineReader on the Mac, I now find myself processing such items as I get them because KNFB does it so quickly.

I find the app to be very flexible and forgiving compared to the handful of other point-and-shoot IOS OCR apps I've used over the past few years. I can hold mail at arm's length or toss a receipt on the countertop, point the camera in the general direction with a rough estimate of proper alignment, and KNFB usually manages to either locate and speak the text quickly or tell me nothing was found, in which case flipping the paper and trying another scan takes only a few seconds.

There are sertain OCR tasks which I still perform with Mac FineReader and/or my desktop scanner, processing large PDF files or using the ADF to import printed items that consist of more than a few pages for example, but probably nineteen out of twenty OCR tasks I now handle with KNFB Reader on my iPhone 5S.

"Tried it on the off chance as I have one, works fine, recognition isn't quite as good but it's infinitely better than prizmo and all the other ones."

it's like saying it is better than Taurus and all the other cars, what exactly are the others? Taurus is certainly not perceived as one of the best cars.
as a matter of fact, prizmo is mediocre at best in my opinion. sure it has some fancy features like scanning multiple pages, but as far as OCR is concerned, it is not very good, and it reflected in app store reviews.

Added support for iPhone 4S, iPod Touch 5th generation, iPhone 6 and 6 plus;
- Larger fonts now available for low vision users;
- Changes and bug fixes to improve performance on all supported devices.

Good afternoon,
I downloaded the app this morning, and tried to use it to read mail.
However, after the picture was taken, the app was not recognizing text. Anyone else having this problem?

I wasn't going to buy this app because I didn't want to gamble $100, but after reading mostly positive reports from others who have bought it, I decided to bite the bullet, gamble the $100, and buy it.

I'm only sightly impressed, but time will tell. Initially it seemed to work quite well, but then some problems started showing up.

The first was that I noticed that my iPhone 5s was getting quite warm and after about 30 minutes playing with the appp, noticed that my battery charge had dropped by 50% or more. I don't know if this is an IOS 8 or a KNFB issue, but if it stays like this, I'm not likely to use the app that much. I'd hate to be away from home, need to make a call, and find I don't have enough charge left on my battery because I used the reader to read something to me.

The second is that it started taking longer and longer to do the OCR and start reading. And this was with business card sized documents, I can't imagine how long it would take to do a full page such as a letter! Maybe I'll have a coffee break while waiting...

At this point, I think I lost the gamble, but , since this app is rather new, and it's the only OCR I could actually get to work, I tried several free ones. Hopefully as it matures, along with IOS 8, things will improve.

I *will* be contacting the developers of KNFB Reader, the more feedback they get the better the chances are that their app will improve.

As for Apple and IOS 8, we can complain, but since we are a rather small percentage of their customer base, VO and accessability issues will always take a back seat to issues that effect their mainstream customers. Never the less, I give them feedback as well. As my dad always like to say, "The squeaky wheel gets the grease". And, before I lost my vision, I was a software developer myself. My biggest complaint has always been that we never got enough feedback from our customers when problems occurred. We can't fix what we don't know is broken.

About the getting warm and the battery, remember that things like tilt guidance if used continuously will eat your battery very quickly and probably cause the phone to warm up.
About the warming up, I wonder if heavy use of the camera, camera flash etc causes the warm up.
Also if you have the setting for flashlight always on enabled in settings this will eat your battery.
Remember that camera flash and this flashlight setting are different settings.
I have my flashlight always on setting turned off in settings, and the camera flash on automatic and I use the tilt guidance sparingly.
I have noticed sometimes the app takes ages to process documents I find in that case its often easier to try taking another photo rather than just waiting, and if that fails to exit and restart the app.
Personally I feel the app has been well worth it, I have used it to read letters from my bank and sort the post routinely for family members.
I have also used it to find information out about various medicines, I don't regret buying the app at all, and I am sure it will only improve with time.

Ah, I missed the flash and tilt buttons, flash was on and now is set to auto, and tilt guidance was already off.

Flashlight was off, that button was a little confusing at first. It's labeled as "Flashlight is always on" making you think that the flashlight is set to on, you have to wait for the switch setting to be read to know how it is really set.

Since this is the only OCR program that I could get any results from at all, the other two I tried never did recognize that there was even any text to OCR, I still have high hopes for this app despite the bumpy start.

Yes I agree the flashlight is always on setting could be labelled more clearly, as the switch name ends with on and the state can be on or off, Maybe it might be better labelled as flashlight, and then just have an on or off state, in fact I might suggest that.

but sometimes if you leave it always on you can have two much light, and get a sort of reflection or glare I think, especially if your taking photos of glossy surfaces.
I would say leave it on automatic, if you get bad results, maybe try off and if its still bad try on. That's why there are three states for users.

That's a good point about the flash. For someone who is totally blind, leaving it set to on is probably a good idea. At present, I have some light perception, so I can tell if the area is well lit, so automatic will work for me.

I discovered that you have to be careful with glossy things, or you'll end up with a reflection of the flash, which will do wonderful things to the OCR's accuracy! ;-)

Does anyone else see (hear) this?

When I try to get a field of view report, VO announces the field of view button's label while KNFB is saying the results of the report. To understand what KNFB is trying to tell me, I have to first turn off VO, tap the field of view button, listen to the report, repeat as needed, then take the picture, and listen to the OCR results. At some point, when needed,turn VO back on.

Lol James, you seem to really like throwing your toys out of the pram, I never said you were wrong, I was simply offering an opinion along with some advice about other factors to consider. This is a community where we all try to help each other, and your above comment certainly doesn't seem in the spirit with this idea.

James I am not even going to dignify your last comment with a response directly because of how aggressive it was, in fact I think I am going to ignore you now unless your making a comment I feel it relevant to come in on, I have no idea why you seem to have taken a dislike to me and decided to attack me I think its quite pathetic really especially as most of your comment had nothing to do with the app and was an attack on me. We are all hear to offer help and advice and there is no right or wrong answer, the camera flash settings are there for a reason, OK documentation might suggest leaving flash on all the time but this isn't right all the time, and I was suggesting it as being a cause of battery drain, as it happens I haven't ever scanned anything glossy so I have never needed to worry about glare myself.

James;

From your last message, it appears you are misunderstanding us. We are not refering to glare from the surface of what is being scanned is resting on, we are refering to glare from light from the flash being reflected back from a document printed on paper with a glossy finish, such as is often the case with magazines for example.

With documents printed on glossy paper, if you have the flash turned on, you'll end up with a picture where most of the text on the page will be washed out by the glare from the reflection of the flash. It's better to turn off the flash and use a light source off to the side. You could also try moving the camera slightly off to the side and aim it at the page at a slight angle so the reflected light from the flash won't come back to the camera, but OCR generally works best if the camera is directly over the page.

The field of view report feature doesn't display at all, because it is self voicing. You'd think, with all of this pushing for braille literacy, coupled with the spread of deaf-blind awareness, that they would actually take such things seriously. That said, we've seen an update, and still no fix. Here's hoping it gets done the next time around.

Gene, I understand that the process of shutting off VoiceOver and then re-enabling it can be pretty annoying. You might want to try turning off speech (done with a three finger double-tap), which would allow you to use the same commands that you'd use if speech is enabled. You can double-tap the field of view report button and receive the necessary feedback. Once finished, just perform the three finger double-tap again. Hope that helps.

The point is that with this app being designed for blind and visually impaired people, you'd think they'd be aware that most of their customers will be using VO and make allowances for it instead of requiring that they first turn off VO to use their app to keep them from talking over each other.

The problem isn't only with the field of view report. I've also found that if you have the automatically start reading option turned on, it seems like both KNFB Reader and VO begin reading at about the same time and getting one of them to shut up without disturbing the other isn't possible. So for now I've turned off the automatic reading feature. The downside of that is now I have no way of knowing when KNFB Reader is done processing a picture so I can start reading it manually.

Darned if you do, darned if you don't...

Anyway, other than just playing with it, I had my first oppertunity to put it to real use today, and after getting through its issues with VO, it worked beautifully.

I realise that this app is new so it will have a few rough spots. Hopefully, over time these will be ironed out. I can already see that this app could be very useful. It just needs some maturing.

Besides being blind to the point that I can only see light sources, I also have tinnitus. Hearing normal conversations with only one person talking at a time can sometimes be a challenge, especially if there's a lot of backgroud noise or the people I'm talking with speak softly. So having two voices running at the same time is definitely a problem for me.

KNFB have stated they are hoping to get rid of non VoiceOver tts messages eventually,
Personally I hope this happens sooner rather than later, I don't see the need for the two voices anyway, OK yes one does give options to read buy sentence, paragraph etc, but I think we should be allowed the option to disable this completely and hide the controls on the bottom of the screen.
I would also prefer it if field of view reports were read buy VoiceOver.
Also, really the app isn't even using a different tts, its using the same voice as VoiceOver, just not the proper VoiceOver function.

I don't mind the TTS voice, although I do wish I had the option to disable it. One thing is for sure, though. The one in KNFB Reader is nowhere near as annoying as the one in BlindSquare.

My comment didn't seem to post for some reason.
The problem with losing a few lines is they could be important lines, and I just think this tts should be made optional for those who prefer VoiceOver and don't need all this fancy navigate buy paragraph stuff and who are happy with the navigation options offered buy VoiceOver.
It would be nice to be able to hide those play pause controls, and also to have pages turn automatically in multi page documents as already happens in apps like iBooks for example.
I just find those controls on the bottom of the screen break the flow of reading up and get in the way as you have to stop VoiceOver reading when it reaches them.