Favorite Assistive Technology Apps & Products of 2012

Favorite Assistive Technology Apps & Products of 2012

Glow Serly    Desember 30, 2012    Comment   

As 2012 comes to a close I decided to make a run down of my favorite assistive technology apps and products that I have been using this year. This list is in no particular order.

Click read more view the list.

Sky WiFi Smartpen from Livescribe

The Sky WiFi Smartpen is easy to use and seamless. It has a built in recorder and camera that, when used with specialized paper, syncs audio and written notes in the cloud. To read the Sky WiFi Smartpen review click here.

iPad mini

iPad mini is a great tablet because of its size, app selection, and accessibility. The lower price point makes it even more compelling. Most of all iPad mini runs all the apps that the full size iPad does and has accessibility features second to none. Click here to read more about the iPad mini.

iOS 6

While iOS 6 many have been short on mainstream features it has several useful accessibility features including Guided Access, highlighting with Speak Selection, Siri improvements, and VoiceOver improvements. Click here to learn more about iOS 6.

Updated Google Search App

This update included great new voice search feature that I found to be better and faster than Siri. Click here to learn more about the Google Search App for iOS.

Scanner Pro

This app has a really nice interface and good scan quality which made it my favorite scanning app of 2012. Click here to learn more.

Prizmo

Prizmo is hands down the best OCR app for iPhone that I have used. Just take a picture of a document and it will read it to you in a matter of seconds. Click here to download or learn more about Prizmo.

Read2Go

A great reader of Bookshare books that allows you to read your books portably without a computer. Bookshare is an online accessible library avalible to qualified people. Click here to download or learn more about Read2Go.

Kurzweil 3000

Kurzweil isn't new to 2012 but it is a program I use everday. It helps me tremendously and it deserves a spot on this list. Click here to learn more about Kurzweil 3000.

Learning Ally

Good app for listening to Learning Ally Audio books. The free app is available for all iOS devices. I would like to see the app include new features such as background audio in 2013. Click here to learn more.

Prizmo Vs. TextDetective OCR iPhone App Challange

Prizmo Vs. TextDetective OCR iPhone App Challange

Glow Serly    Agustus 01, 2012    Comment   

Prizmo and TextDetective are optical charactor recognition (OCR) apps for the iPhone. These apps use the iPhone camera to take a picture of a document and then convert the text on the paper to digital text. Because the apps rely on the iPhone camera they work best on the iPhone 4S. The apps were compared using a complex image with multiple images and columns. Both apps were used in a room with good lighting. Watch the video above to learn more about each of the apps.

Prizmo costs $9.99 in the App Store. Click here to download Prizmo. Prizmo is the fastest most accurate user friendly OCR app that I have ever tested. It is designed for sighted users. It allows you to crop and edit the picture before you start the OCR process. Once the text has been recognized you can read it using text-to-speech, email it or copy the text. It is important to note that users with visual impairments may have a hard time taking pictures of the documents they want to OCR. It also is impossible for a visually impaired user to crop the document to improve the accuracy. That being said for sighted users very easy to use.

TextDetective costs $1.99 for a limited time. Click here to download TextDetective. TextDetective is designed for people with visual impairments. The app is designed to make taking a picture of a document easy for the visually impair. In my tests I had a hard time taking a clear picture of a whole document. I could successfully capture a clear picture of one or two paragraphs. TextDetective was less accurate and slower than Prizmo. One problem I found is that TextDetective only works in landscape orientation but most documents are in portrait orientation. The orientation of the app makes it difficult to  take a crisp picture of the page. In all for only $1.99 TextDetective may be worth a try.

Apps Provided Complimentary To Reviewer