With a clever wordplay on “seeing eye”; Microsoft revolutionizes accessibility with their app Seeing AI which makes the visually impaireds’ life a lot easier. The app is not just a basic text to speech app, it offers many ground-breaking features that can truly change lives: it can read documents or handwritten text aloud, it can recognize products from their barcode, recognize and locate the faces of people you’re with, as well as facial characteristics, approximate age, emotion, describe sceneries or colors around you, as well as identify currency bills if you’re paying in cash. Point is, if you’re visually challenged, your approach to day to day tasks will never be the same. As Microsoft themselves introduced it:
”Seeing AI is a Microsoft research project that brings together the power of the cloud and AI to deliver an intelligent app, designed to help you navigate your day. It turns the visual world into an audible experience.”
The app is also available in English, Dutch, French, German, Japanese and Spanish with more languages to come in the future. The only minor hiccup with this app, in my opinion, is the fact that it is only available for iPhone users though I hope that eventually, it’ll also be available on Android. After all, the Android operating system is currently the most popular mobile operating system in the world.
Actually, this a great innovation and a very helpful app for sightless people. Hopefully, Microsoft will keep on working on this project to make it even simpler to use and available for any type of Operation Systems.