Dear Members of the AppleVis community,
I am proudly presenting an app I helped to develop. Zuzanka is the first expiry date scanner. An app that will help you to scan and recognise expiry dates on food products. The app has been devised and developed by and for the visually impaired. Prior to its release it was beta tested by the visually impaired users. Although designed with this group in mind, the app will support all those who wish to keep their kitchen tidy and eat healthy food (or do not want to accidentally purchase expired products).
The app is very simple to use. Just point your camera at the expiry date and the app will take care of the rest. A sonar sound will guide you to the right place on the package. The app has a tutorial that will help you to learn how to use it. It also contains a list of commonly used food products together with the possible locations of expiry dates. Once the expiry date has been recognised, you can share the recognised text and/or image.
The app can be downloaded from App Store using this link: https://apps.apple.com/pl/app/zuzanka/id6444279925 . It works with iPhone and iPad. As of now, it is available in English and Polish.
You can test Zuzanka using a 14-day trial period. After that, you can subscribe the app. Alternatively, you can scan one date per day for free.
Disclosure. I am visually impaired myself. Although I was the one who suggested development of expiry date scanner, I am not a computer programmer. During the development process, I coordinated tests with visually impaired users and made sure that all comments and suggestions (both mine and those of beta testers) were included.
We will be more than happy to receive any comments and questions regarding the app. We plan to continue developing it in the future.
By Wojtek Figiel, 2 January, 2023
Forum
iOS and iPadOS
Comments
No More Unknown Expiry Dates
Initial results of this app are great!
I was able to get the expiry date on a bottle of water within a minute or so.
Looking forward to testing with other products, and expect Zuzanka to be a frequently used app for me.
Pretty good so purchased lifetime subscription.
Hi and thanks for making a previously impossible task now something we can do independently. First impressions are not perfect but pretty good. I managed to get a date from butter, cream cheese, ham, kefir and bread. I sadly failed with milk, blueberries chopped pineapple and naked red machine juices. Considering I wouldn’t have had any of those previously and was actually going to throw the ham away thinking it was dead but I found out it has 2 weeks left to go. Oh and also failed on sausage rolls. I purchased the lifetime subscription because it’s a truly new type of app and I’d love to see it improve and you also got the pricing exactly right in my opinion. I wasn’t going to have yet another monthly subscription but appreciated the option and the lifetime was a stretch but still reasonable so I used that one hoping the app gets better. FYI. If the lifetime had been any more expensive I think I might have closed the app and forgotten about it which would have been a shame because it’s already promising. I just don’t want another subscription for something that should be pay once which you offered so great choice on the pricing structure.
Great idea, needs work
This is the kind of app that I have been hoping for however, it needs a lot of work. I tested it on more than 10 products and with each sent a photo to a sightedperson that I took in the regular camera app. The app did not have the date right in all the products except for 1. That is not a good result. A person expects some errors but not at such a high rate. Sometimes it had the right date but it was not the expiry date but the production date. Can't justify paying for this until results are more accurate and consistent. No point in using an app where you must double check the results with a sighted person.
A thankyou message
Dear All,
Many thanks to all those of you who decided to give Zuzanka a go. I very much appreciate your time and effort. I am really glad many of you found the app useful. I am also glad that we managed, as it seems, to get the pricing structure well. It goes without saying that our goal is not to charge excessive amounts of money for the app.
We would definitely love to continue developing Zuzanka. After all, this is only a piece of software so it can have its glitches. However, I agree that the kind of user experience reported by Greg should be out of place. Greg, we will be more than happy to assist you and improve the app. If you want to contribute, please write to us at [email protected] . The app is based on an artificial intelligence algorithm which can be improved. If we get more data regarding your use, we will make an effort to do just that.