Navigating the world around you is certainly a challenge if you are blind or visually impaired. One tool that can help is a free mobile app from Microsoft called Seeing AI. Designed to alert and inform people about their surroundings, the app is now available to Android users after being limited to iOS.
In a blog post published MondaySaqib Shaikh, founder and head of Microsoft Seeing AI, announced the expansion to Android and highlighted some of the app’s latest features.
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Available in the App Store And Google game, Seeing AI works by identifying and describing people, objects, text and other elements around you. The goal is to help you better navigate your environment and understand documents and other physical items by hearing them read aloud.
The first is text recognition. Launch the app and hold your phone over a piece of printed or written text. Once recognized, Seeing AI will start reading the text aloud until the end.
Next comes document recognition. Hold your phone over a full document and the app will scan and display the words. You can then listen to the document read aloud by reading it, pausing, moving forward or back as needed.
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Another handy feature is a barcode reader that will identify and communicate information about a product based on the code reading. Then you can take a photo of your surroundings and the app will describe the overall scene as well as the individual elements in the photo.
A people reader will scan a person captured by the camera, then highlight their visual characteristics, adding their distance from you. Finally, a currency scanner will analyze a bill or coin to tell you its value.
As part of the transition to Android, the app also has some recent improvements.
Scanning a photo now provides richer descriptions of the details captured in the image. Additionally, you can now ask Seeing AI more questions about a scanned document. For examples, you can inquire about items on a menu, get prices for items on a catalog page, or hear a summary of an item.
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“There are more than 3 billion active Android users worldwide, and integrating Seeing AI into this platform will enable many more blind and visually impaired people to use this technology in their daily lives” , Shaikh said in the blog. “We will continue to work with the community to understand feedback to improve the app. And as new versions are rolled out, customer feedback will continue to be essential for new AI-based improvements in future versions of the Seeing AI application.”
Sheikh, who lost his sight at the age of sevensaid the Android version and new features were launched to celebrate International Day of Persons with Disabilities (IDPD). Seeing AI is now available in 18 languages, including Czech, Danish, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swedish. Microsoft plans to expand support to 36 languages in 2024.