Hi everyone hope you're all doing well and staying safe. I know there's probably a plethora of posts already on this topic, but I thought I'd ask here for the latest current information. I have an iPhone 12 mini which I would like to use to Scan reed and take pictures of printed documents for example letters and receipts. In everyone's experience what is currently the best app to do this please? Thanks very much for your help everyone stay safe and best regards.
Comments
I like seeing AI for this…
I like seeing AI for this because it will automatically take a picture when the full page is in view whereas other apps like One Step Reader you need to double tap on a button to see if the entire page is in the view, and then double tap to take the picture. One step reader is good however if you want to save the picture or text to a file. To summarise, Seeing AI is good for quick documents, and One Step reader is better if you need to store a picture or text from a page.
Envision AI, seeing AI or voice dream scanner
Both envision AI and seeing aI are free, in my experience envision AI recognizes text much better than the other two.
envision AI and seeing AI are free, but if you want to recognize smaller text, like on a card, voice dream scanner works best for this, voice dream scanner is $5.99 one time.
Seeing AI works best when recognizing documents if you have an Internet connection that is more than 600 KBPS.
Envision AI requires a minimum Internet speed of 128 KBPS in order to recognize documents.
Voice dream scanner works offline.
You may also consider Sullivan plus which is similar to Seeing AI with similar features, but it requires a Internet speed of at least two Mbps.
There is also Supersense, but from my experience it isn’t that good, first it uses the iOS speech synthesizer instead of using voiceover speech, and it does not allow you to save any of the spoken text. Your experience may vary depending on how well you place the camera.
And if you want to recognize short text, like some thing displayed on the TV, Supersense and seeing AI work best with that, seeing AI, the short text channel works offline.
There’s also one step reader, which I personally regret buying, it is overpriced and does not work really well, it does not auto detect edges of documents, but it works offline though, but one step reader sometimes reads gibberish.
If you have an iPhone XR or newer, use the iOS camera app to take a photo and open the Photos app and find a photo to view the text using the Live text function.
Seeing AI is Where It's At for Me...
Hi. I currently only have Seeing AI, and it seems to do a fairly decent job. But as I've often said, personal preference is what it all boils down to. That said, I participated in a live demo of the Envision Glasses last week. The 2 nice ladies conducting the demo did a great job, and one of them sent me a follow-up email as promised. These glasses are pretty pricy, but they seem like a great thing to own.
$3000.00
the invision glasses seem like they’re a good product, but the price is way too high for something that just reads print. they are yet another blindness specific technology that is over priced, and there is always Show and Tell, on the Amazon Echo Show, that reads what products are, for a tenth of the price. you can also by the Echo Show 5, for $199.00 which is even cheeper, and also has this functionality. We need to stop supporting blindness companies, they’re taking advantage of us! I have OneStep reader, and I bought it for all supported platforms. it was good at the time, but Seeing AI and Live text are just as good. both by mainstream companies. I am probably in the minority here, when I say, stop purchasing this blindness technology! Mainstream is better, and often cheeper! Braille devices, victer reader streams, pen friends, and many other technologies made for the blind, are way too over priced! and for scanning and reading, things should be free. I mean, if sighted people were given the option of buying a dedacated app for scanning print, something they can do for free, would they buy it? I think not!
Definitely Agree
I definitely have to agree with you on the pricing. I'm planning to get Envision AI but I most certainly will not be able to afford the glasses.
Envision AI application
The envision AI application is completely free to use as of July 15.
But seeing AI has one of the most features you would ever expect from a free app.
For most people, seeing AI is one of the best apps out there.
Want to know why? It has a lot of different channels such as short text, document, and you guessed it, currency, scene, handwriting, color and light, Sullivan plus has similar features but does not have currency.
Envision only has reading texts, identifying colors and scenes, and a QR code reader, seeing AI also has a QR code reader but it’s called Product.
The best thing about the InVision AI application is that it can read more languages than seeing AI, voice dream scanner, supersense or one step reader, it also has a built-in translator that uses the Google translate engine.
If you have at least 600 KBPS Internet connection, which 99.9% of people have, seeing AI works really well.
As others said in the comment section, main stream products generally gives you more features for a cheaper price or completely free.
I totally agree that products designed for the blind are advertently expensive.
If you look at products for people with speech impairments, it is even more expensive compared to products designed for the blind.
Main stream products generally already has all the functionality that you need
case in point, Verbley
my x roomate was nonverble. he used an app on his iPad, verbley, to speak for him. the app has a free version, and a paid version. the differences are numeris, but the main facter in purchasing it was with the premium paid version, the app would repeat what he said. it was $120.00 with tax. Apple should find a way to enter the augmentitive alternative comunacation market. they have the potential to really disrupt the industry! that price is just rediculus for such a core fuction!
Voicedream Scanner for best accuracy.
Hi, I know the 2 main free apps are great and offer loads of features that voicedream scanner doesn’t however if I want the best results possible for scanning documents I always end up using voicedream. I’ve learned over time if any app is going to give a good result it will be scanner. It isn’t free but its not expensive and well worth it IMO.
I've had a go with voice…
I've had a go with voice dream scanner it gave me okay results but not perfect. Thanks very much for your help everyone.
Could you do this with stock…
Could you do this with stock apps now that Live Text is a thing?
I've never been able to get good results with Live Text, either using the camera app or scanning a document in the Notes app. I thought that might work since when I tried it, my phone took a picture automatically when it thought the whole document was in the camera view, like Seeaing AI does. I got very little readable text though.
I would think it's easier for people who have had vision before. Those of us who have never had sight have a harder time using a camera because people thought we would never need to. But all these demos of AT devices make it sound like it's super easy to just point at something, snap a pic and get a perfectly read representation of text (I'm looking at you, StellarTrek, which costs as much as a 1TB 13 Pro Max)!
Having said that, maybe some of these specialist products aren't aimed at us techies who use our phones for everything as much, but the prices ... ouch!