Blind and Visually Impaired Community
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What are your esential must-have apps or software for phone or computer? (self.Blind)
submitted by bjayernaeiy
Hey folks 🙂, short of screen readers, what would you consider that is a must-have on your device? Something that is strongly helpful to you or that you just use on a daily basis? Feel free to name some apps that are not of esential importance but you still like using.
I'll start, on my computer one of the most helpful software that I use is ABBYY FineReader 14. For those who don't know what it is, it's an optical character recognition software, so you can scan and convert anything with it. Image PDF documents? No problem, gimme a min and I'll convert them to text PDF. Need me to scan and read a physical book or your lecture notes that are only on paper? Sure, lemme just plug in my scanner and I'll scan them and save to a Word Document or PDF. This is very helpful for books in my mother tongue, since there isn't a big online presence of ebooks here; if I want to read a book in my native language I have to scan it myself.
So, a long this vein, hit me with your must-haves 👍
I'll start, on my computer one of the most helpful software that I use is ABBYY FineReader 14. For those who don't know what it is, it's an optical character recognition software, so you can scan and convert anything with it. Image PDF documents? No problem, gimme a min and I'll convert them to text PDF. Need me to scan and read a physical book or your lecture notes that are only on paper? Sure, lemme just plug in my scanner and I'll scan them and save to a Word Document or PDF. This is very helpful for books in my mother tongue, since there isn't a big online presence of ebooks here; if I want to read a book in my native language I have to scan it myself.
So, a long this vein, hit me with your must-haves 👍
guitarandbooks 1 points 3y ago
I am totally blind and use a screen reader on all three platforms. Here are some of my favorite apps on Windows, Mac, and iOS:
On my Windows 10 partition, I use Jarte for word processing, google krome and IE for web browsing, dropbox to easily access/share files, Winamp or vlc for music and movies, Sonar 8.53 for limited music and audio work, and goldwave for batch converting audio files or extracting audio from video files etc.
On the Mac, I use Pages for word processing, numbers for spreadsheets, dropbox, Safari and Krome for web browsing, Apple mail for mail, Logic and ProTools for music and audio production, and Stuffit expander for unzipping things. (There are others but I'm not on my Mac at the moment.)
On iOS via my iPhone and iPad, I use Pandora and Tune In for music, podcasts, and live streams of NPR and CNN etc, Amazon for shopping, Lift, grub hub, e bay, bard, Kindel, Apollo for Reddit, Dropbox, Talking Tuner if I need a reference note when tuning my guitar or my bass, Facetime, Skype, and Zoom for audio/video calls when teaching a lesson or just chatting with somebody, Seeing AI for sorting groceries, getting the jist of my mail, or quickly identifying currency, and of course, things like news, mail, voice memos, clock and reminders etc.
While I read a lot of books from bookshare, I just open the xml files in a web browser on any platform and that works for me.
On my Windows 10 partition, I use Jarte for word processing, google krome and IE for web browsing, dropbox to easily access/share files, Winamp or vlc for music and movies, Sonar 8.53 for limited music and audio work, and goldwave for batch converting audio files or extracting audio from video files etc.
On the Mac, I use Pages for word processing, numbers for spreadsheets, dropbox, Safari and Krome for web browsing, Apple mail for mail, Logic and ProTools for music and audio production, and Stuffit expander for unzipping things. (There are others but I'm not on my Mac at the moment.)
On iOS via my iPhone and iPad, I use Pandora and Tune In for music, podcasts, and live streams of NPR and CNN etc, Amazon for shopping, Lift, grub hub, e bay, bard, Kindel, Apollo for Reddit, Dropbox, Talking Tuner if I need a reference note when tuning my guitar or my bass, Facetime, Skype, and Zoom for audio/video calls when teaching a lesson or just chatting with somebody, Seeing AI for sorting groceries, getting the jist of my mail, or quickly identifying currency, and of course, things like news, mail, voice memos, clock and reminders etc.
While I read a lot of books from bookshare, I just open the xml files in a web browser on any platform and that works for me.
lhamil64 1 points 3y ago
For my phone, I use the weZoom app a lot. Really helpful for reading small print on things.
crunchtime80 1 points 3y ago
A couple other phone apps that I find helpful: Mag Light Pro and Seeing AI.
thatblindgirl 1 points 3y ago
I love my book share app. It always has all the new releases very quickly and I’ve even found some test material study guides on there.
bjayernaeiy [OP] 1 points 3y ago
Oo yea that does sound useful, what platform are we talking about though? From a (admittedly) not that in-depth google search this is the only app I found for Windows: Dolphin EasyReader for Windows, is this the thing you use?
As to IOS or Android, as far as I know you need to use Voice Dream to access Bookshare, and I use that on my phone already :)
As to IOS or Android, as far as I know you need to use Voice Dream to access Bookshare, and I use that on my phone already :)
thatblindgirl 2 points 3y ago
No, our use the Read2Go app on my iPhone.
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