Operating a smartphone can be challenging for people with a visual impairment. But the fact that around 89 percent of them own a smartphone, downloading the best apps for blind people can give a huge help. Thanks to advanced features that make it accessible to blind and visually impaired people.
These apps are specially designed for people with visual issues. It helps improve their ability to access information, encourage them to be more independent, and bring their life quality to the next level. No more stress when operating your smartphone.
Table of Contents
Best Apps for Blind and Visually Impaired People
You can find a plethora of apps for blind people but only a few of them are trustworthy. These apps vary in function ranging from helping you control the smartphone without touching, describing objects, to learning Braille. Let’s figure out the best apps for blind or visually impaired person.
1. Be My Eyes
Be My Eyes is a unique application that gives you a pair of healthy eyes so you can see the world in a better way. It connects you with a vast community globally who are ready to assist you by lending their eyesight and giving support with your everyday tasks from reading tags to setting up appliances.
This app for blind person serves as a platform where you can be either a user or volunteer. As a user, you can sign up to get visual support for free for your tasks. If the task is too complicated, you may want to call one of the company partners for video customer support.
If you want to share eyesight, kindly sign up as a volunteer. When users in need are calling, pick up your phone and assist them to complete the tasks in a matter of minutes. But don’t worry, this app will automatically connect users with other volunteers if you are busy.
How this app works is pretty unique. When a user needs help, she will make a call to a volunteer. When the call is answered, both parties will be connected through a live video call with one-way audio. Volunteers can see the situation and provide support for the user.
This amazing app currently has 3 million volunteers across the globe. It also has helped millions of blind or visually impaired people do their daily activities in the most convenient way.
2. TapTapSee
TapTapSee is one of the best apps for blind people that you can find on the market. It is designed to help people with visual impairment and blindness to identify objects in their surroundings. This is an amazing app that makes your daily life easier.
TapTapSee encourages people with visual problem to become more independent day by day. Promising easy operation, all you have to do is take a photo of the object by double tapping the screen. Listen to the app when identifying the object for you.
This powerful app is packed with useful features. For example, it has auto-focus notification that helps you capture a steady and clear picture. It also makes it possible to identify images from your camera roll, which means you don’t need to take another picture.
What’s interesting, it provides you with a share button that lets you share identification via social media, text or email. Be sure to turn on Talkback feature so this app can perform spoken identification. Make your life better with TapTapSee on your Android device.
3. Sullivan+
Install Sullivan+ and get virtual aid from your smartphone. Brought to you by TUAT Corp, Sullivan+ is an application for blind and low vision who find it difficult to identify objects. This app is designed to improve their accessibility to things in their surroundings.
Sullivan+ is chosen as one of the best free apps for blind people for a reason. It comes loaded with features that come in handy to offer visual aids through your smartphone. With just one shot, artificial intelligence will find help based on the situation.
If you find difficulty when checking the content of magazines or newspapers, it has text recognition technology that tells you the content by sound. Simply point your camera and this app will recognize the text and read aloud for you.
Besides, this app can be your personal assistant who tells you about a person you meet. Thanks to face recognition technology that tells you which person you meet including their age and gender. Plus, it also has an image description feature that identifies objects around you and create description from it.
4. Lookout
Lookout is the best app for blind people that provides assistance to get things done more easily. Designed for people with blindness and low vision, it uses your phone camera to identify objects so you can get more information around you. Doing daily tasks made simple with this app.
Lookout is powered by six different modes for various activities. For example, you can take image mode to provide you with image description both the summary and detail. Text mode is suitable to skim text and listen to it, commonly used for newspaper or mail.
What’s interesting, it has food label mode that quickly identify packaged foods according to their label. It scans barcodes and provides you with information you need. And if you wish to identify banknotes easily, Lookout has Currency mode to choose from.
This application is available in over 20 languages, making it a great app for blind people from different places. Overall, simple operation and tons of features make Lookout a reliable app to assist people with visual impairment do their daily tasks.
5. Braille Academy
Do you want to learn braille in a fun way? Download Braille Academy to your Android smartphone and learn with fun. This app is designed to teach you Unified English Braille consisting of 26 letter and frequently used punctuation marks, symbols, word signs, and many more.
Discover 29 challenges and 59 levels to help you master braille. It is designed with various themes including a contrast theme that comes with bolder text and more contrast to help users with visual impairment. Despite it being free, your braille learning process won’t be distracted by ads.
Braille Academy is completely adjustable to meet your needs. There’s Settings page that allows you to switch on and off the sound, button vibration, key sound, and key vibration. It also gives you a chance to recognize error from vibration.
One thing that makes Braille Academy the best app for blind people is offline support. It works without an internet connection so it is possible to learn braille at any time anywhere.
6. RightHear
RightHear is your blind assistant to help you live a better life every single day. The app’s mission is to help people with blindness or visual impairment to orient themselves more easily in their environments. The goal is to make them feel more independent in their life.
There are several modes to find on RightHear that you can use for different purposes. Outdoor and indoor modes, for example, allow you to get to know nearby points of your interest as well as know the direction you are heading. This mode also lets you recognize objects to help with daily tasks.
If you want to access public transportation, this visually impaired app comes with a mode that provides you with a list of nearby stations, lines, and departures. Now you can easily figure out your bus routes and when it departs right from your smartphone.
RightHear is a blind assistant that you need to get daily tasks done. It has several features specially designed to help you feel more independent to go anywhere or do anything in your environment. Moreover, this app is completely easy and free to use.
7. OneStep Reader
People with low vision or visual impairment need assistant to read documents. For this reason, OneStep Reader comes to you to provide assistant for reading anything from mails, menus, documents, magazines, and others. No more bothering your family or friends to read it for you.
OneStep Reader is powered by text recognition technology that reads captured documents. Once the text is captured with your device, this application reads it aloud. Alternatively, the document will be displayed with braille so you can read it silently. Thanks to speech-to-text and OCR that promise accuracy.
To make sure you capture a good photo, this best app for blind people features viewfinder assist, auto text detection, and tilt assist. It also has the ability to navigate sentence, word, character to optimize virtual text reading. Not to mention it supports multiple languages including English, Spanish, and Russian.
Whether you want to read the price tag, product label, or package, this app has got you covered. It is efficient to read lengthy documents such as user manual and newspaper. Get OneStep Reader and overcome reading difficulty issues with it.
8. Supersense
Supersense is a must-have app for blind and low vision people. This smart assistive app works efficiently to help people with visual impairment to read, find objects, or explore their environment without help. Providing you with the second pair of eyes, it boosts your independence to complete daily tasks.
Feeling more independent can boost your confidence and improve your overall life quality. To achieve this goal, Supersense is supported by artificial intelligence that helps you deal with everyday activities. Now you can independently read text and documents, locate objects, and explore places.
Powerful AI helps describe things around you, providing you with clues about your surroundings. This best app for blind people uses your camera to capture items before informing you so the accuracy of identification heavily depends on the quality of your camera.
It is good to know that Supersense supports TalkBack accessibility for convenient use. It also supports multiple languages, making it a great app for users worldwide. Designed for blind individuals and anyone with visual problem, it has everything you need to get more confident with your condition.
9. Envision AI
If you are looking for an OCR app to help you read documents, Envision AI should be on your list. It boasts a fast and reliable performance to read text aloud, assisting blind and low vision people achieve independence in their lives.
This app is developed with the visually impaired community to make sure its simplicity, ease-of-use, and benefits. With just your Android smartphone, you can scan text, object, people, or anything around you so Envision AI can read it for you.
Featuring Talkback, this best app for blind people allows you to read text in more than 60 languages. You can also read handwritten letters thanks to OCR technology that recognizes captured handwritings. As a plus, it is possible to import PDF and images to receive a description.
Envision AI provides more support to boost your independence. Use this app to detect colors, scan barcodes to get further information about products, and describe visual scene in front of you. Feel the convenience of seeing with this app.
10. Brailliac: Braille Tutor
Learning braille is made simple with Brailliac. This app can be your personal tutor to help you master braille in a fast and fun way. It can be a great application for students, teachers, or anyone who wants to learn braille in multiple languages from a smartphone.
Brailliac serves more than a dictionary—it comes with a ton of features that you need. It has several modes to help you learn while boosting your motivation. For example, targeted practice mode lets you figure out which symbols confuse you while challenge mode fires up your motivation through in-time trials.
If you are a beginner, this best free app for blind people is packed with translation mode which translates sentences to and from the braille. You can also level up by earning points and unlock more features and themes. Learning braille is so much fun with Brailliac.
Blind individuals don’t always need help. Make yourself feel more independent by doing everyday tasks without assistance from your loved ones. Simply download the best apps for blind people and they come in handy to read aloud for you, describe things, and even help you learn braille in a fun way.