Tech Talk: Accessible Technology and Apps
Many creative, inventive websites and applications are now available to make life easier for people with disabilities, whether you need assistance reading, understanding instructions, getting around your community, or communicating with others. With a smartphone or tablet, help is just a tap away! Here are just a few of the best programs available, and most of them are free or cost very little.
Vision Help
AccessibilitySpark.com: This website and corresponding app helps enhance the user experience when accessing websites. It offers color inversion, dark or light contrast, color desaturation, a reading guide, text sizing, spacing, highlighting of content, keyboard navigation, voice commands, and screen-reading optimization.
BeMyEyes.com: Be My Eyes allows users to get free, instant visual descriptions through their phones, 24/7. You can connect to a volunteer, take a picture, and the app’s/website’s AI function can describe it, or you can connect to partners through the service directory for help with products. If you’re looking for a volunteer opportunity, this is a good one!
TapTapSee: This mobile camera app for blind and visually impaired users works with your phone’s camera and voiceover function to take a picture or video of anything and identify it out loud for you.
Seeing AI: This free app narrates your surroundings aloud, which is helpful for blind and low-vision users. It can describe photos, identify products, and more. And because it’s an ongoing research project by Microsoft, its features will continue to evolve.
Voice Dream Reader: This app uses natural-sounding voices with different accents and dialects to read PDFs, articles, camera scans, ebooks, and more aloud for users. It even works without an internet connection.
Oko: Oko is an AI-driven navigation app for iPhone users that provides detailed, turn-by-turn directions. It also will alert you when the walk sign is on, provide intersection information, and tell you when it’s safe to cross the street.
Hearing Help
ClearCaptions.com: ClearCaptions technology is a system that’s free to qualified hearing-impaired users. It comes with a phone unit that provides on-screen captions of what your caller is saying, almost in real time.
Sorenson.com/CaptionCall: CaptionCall is another captioning technology service that provides captions for landlines, smartphones, or home internet service. The sound can also be customized to your needs and specific hearing loss.
Otter.ai: This AI-driven website and app allows you to record conversations and see them transcribed almost in real time. You can also upload audio files that it can transcribe. And it will provide AI summaries of conversations. Good for keeping track of meetings and action items.
RogerVoice: This app transcribes phone calls in real time, or you can type a message and have RogerVoice speak it aloud.
The ASL App: This Apple iPhone app enables users to learn conversational American Sign Language.
Mobility Help
WheelMap.org: This website and app lets you mark and find accessible places worldwide, for free.
Accessnow.com: This website and corresponding app uses crowdsourcing to gather accessibility information about routes and businesses’ accessibility features.
Google Maps; You probably already have it, but you may not know that it offers street views, shares info on traffic and public transportation, and lets you zoom in on streets to see if curbs are lowered. Select the “wheelchair accessible” option to plan your routes. You can also turn on “Accessible Places” to have it display the wheelchair icon if there is an accessible entrance, restroom, seating, etc.
Roll Mobility: This app allows users to review the accessibility of locations and to discover what accessible features public locations offer. You can add photos and videos to accompany your reviews and engage with other reviewers.
Communication Help
Proloquo2Go: This augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) app for iPhones and iPads enables nonspeaking individuals to express themselves confidently and initiate conversations. Its features can be customized for various disabilities. People with autism, cerebral palsy, or Down syndrome who can’t always use speech can use this option, much in the same way that the deaf use ASL. Users can point at icons and the app verbalizes them as words, which users string together as sentences.
ClaroRead – Text to Speech Software: ClaroRead software provides a suite of reading, writing, and study tools, such as text-to-speech with a range of voices, speech-to-text, conversion of paper documents and images into accessible digital files, proofreading of written work, and more.
Assistive Touch: The Assistive Touch app is probably in your existing smartphone, and it is designed to help people with disabilities perform phone functions more easily, such as pinching, swiping, and using Siri.
Google Voice: Google Voice is an internet-based VoIP (voice over internet protocol) service that enables users with reduced dexterity to perform many communication tasks over internet, such as placing calls by computer, voicemail transcription, automatic call recording, The user doesn’t have to touch the phone, click, or scroll. It’s all hands free and uses voice commands.
Assistive Express: Assistive Express is an AAC app for iPhone and iPad that uses word prediction, adaptive learning, favorites for common sentences, adjustable volume and speed, next-word prediction, and more.
Keeble – AssistiveWare: Keeble is a downloadable, accessible keyboard to make typing on a phone or tablet easier. It also has features to support dyslexics. It features customizable colors and fonts, including the dyslexia font, offers predictive text, and more.
Wellness Help
The Curable App – Chronic Pain Recovery: Curable’s Clara is a virtual pain coach. You interact with it by text and gif. It helps users manage pain through guided meditations and activities.
ICE (‘In Case of EMERGENCY’): ICE is an app that keeps track of your medical emergency information, organizes your contacts, and put everything in an easy-to-use format for doctors or paramedics to easily access.
Flaredown.com: Flaredown is a website and app that is a comprehensive symptom tracker for those with chronic illnesses. It helps you identify foods you can and can’t eat, track medication dosages, log mental health status, and track symptoms of your condition.
Medisafe App: This website and app features medication tracking and reminders, sends warnings about drug interactions, tracks meds for you and your loved ones, helps communicate with doctors, and more.
