New app for vocalizing text in images
Hey Everyone,
I wanted to let folks know that I've just released a new macOS app, assistEyes Speak: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/assisteyes-speak/id1522745126?mt=12
This is effectively an app I wrote for myself, as I use macOS, but don't use VoiceOver almost ever, mostly magnifier + speak selected text.
The primary purpose is as an image reader, if the app is opened, any image you copy to your clipboard will be scanned via the new OCR on macOS and any text will be read aloud. I think VO does this, but if you don't use VO and still want an easy path to this functionality, check it out.
This also means that you can get any on-screen text read, accessible or not, just by using the Cmd + Shift + 4 shortcut to screenshot a portion of the screen. Also super useful for text in images found on many social networks and some emails.
Hope someone finds it useful.
Nick
Comments
Very cool
I'm a PC user and use NVDA for a similar purpose, but it's so great there's now something on MAC too. It's really helpful in so many instances. It would be really cool to have something like this be accessible to Voiceover so that if there's ever text one needs to mouse click on, they can do that. WHat I mean is this: WIth NVDA, when you screenshot a screen, you can then use standard text navigation commands to navigate what you've scanned. If you press enter on a word you're on, it will simulate a mouse click. Really helpful if you're u sing an inaccessible application which you need to access with only the mouse.
That's interesting feedback,…
That's interesting feedback, I hadn't considered doing something that involved, but I could see where that might be something that would help in situations where something is truly not accessible to the screen reader by default.
Thanks for the note!
Nick
Trust me, people would use it
An instance where this would be helpful is with Virtual instruments used for making music. There are lots of features which aren't enherently accessible as a lot of the user interfaces are not text based. With OCR you could navigate around and as long as there is text, you could interact with it.