I can no longer read printed documents because of my AMD. Is there an iOS app that can scan a document and read it aloud tome? I use an Apple iPhone 12. Thank you for any help here!
Grigg
By Grigg DeWitt, 1 March, 2024
Forum
iOS and iPadOS
Comments
Many, But
The Notes app that comes with iOS can scan a document into a PDF form then the phone will read it if screen recognition is on. Scan is in the More option at the top of the screen.
Re: App to read printed documents
Hey there Grigg,
You could try Seeing AI, unless you are talking about apps to work with a hardware scanner. In that case, I'm not sure.
There are lots of other OCR apps - Envision AI is another one. Supersense, etc.
Others can list more if wanted.
Portia.
I'd recommend Seeing AI.
It's free but you do have to turn voiceover on to use it.
There aren't really any apps that work without voiceover as far as I know.
To use it, download the app, turn on voiceover and go to find a voice you like by going to settings/accessibility/voice/speech and tapping on the voice it uses, then others should pop up.
Once you've found a voice you like, personally i go with alix, open the app, flick right, then up on the picker until you here document, you'll probably get a little pop up explaining what it does, once you've closed that, then you can hold the phone above your document and it will tell you how many edges are visible, then once all edges are visible it will automaticly take the picture for you and once that's done start reading,, you can stop it buy swiping around a bit, then I believe there's a take another picture button or something like that, you'll have to keep doing that until all your document is done.
I'm not sure if you can share it or not, also be warned; it can and probably will get things wrong, the tech is great these days but it's not perfect.
One Step Reader
this app is old, but I Believe it's the only one designed to scan multiple pages. I bought it under it's original name, KNFB Reader, and then the new name, because the NFB transfered it to the developers, they came up with it's current name still works great.
I believe seeing AI can do that too.
You just have to use the document mode and once you've scanned your first picture I think there's a button that says scan next page or something like that.
Envision ai app
Hi, this is a good app because it reads columns as expected. May not be the best OCR although it isn't bad but for newspapers etc it is good. Not sure how many of the other apps read out correctly with this kind of format. Basically as you can tell there are a lot of choices.
I'd like to add
I'd like to add be my eyes to the list. The be my AI feature never ceases to amaze me.
For me it is context dependent as I believe it is for many others here. It's great to have a toolbox of a few great apps for this purpose. For example I just use be my AI to take a picture of a pamphlet that arrived at my Front door a few minutes ago. Within one minute of picking up the pamphlet I was having it read to me. I snapped a picture of the front of it and then snapped a picture of it unfolded and gave the AI instruction to read me the pamphlet. It read it in a very flowing and comprehensive way. I always experience a bit of Awe at how a smooth things are getting
Speech Central
Speech Central is an all in one iOS app that will scan and read your documents quickly and easily. That’s what I routinely do.
Re: App for reading documents.
I have found Supersense to be a good app for reading documents, its guidance for capturing an entire page is really useful. It can recognise multiple pages and detects columns too. One thing to consider with all these apps is whether the recognition occurs on the device or in the cloud! You will probably not want to send confidential information to a server somewhere for processing. I know Supersense Is not free but give the demo a try and see what you think. Prizmo Go is quite good too.
How about VDScanner?
Or whatever it is, the thing that used to be Voice Dream Scanner? I haven't tried it yet. But I think it can do multiple pages and continuous page scanning and all that good stuff, e.g for scanning entire books. I have hardware on Windows, so I might not use it for that a lot, but if anybody's got a recommendation for software that can batch scan and let me share stuff and all, that would be great. That way in case I'm out somewhere, in theory I could scan an entire book.
VD Scanner + VD Reader vs Speech Central
I had to buy both VS Scanner and VD Reader separately when they were a one time purchase so I could have both scanning and reading. Now VD Reader is an expensive annual subscription. You can do batch scanning with them. Speech Central is a one time payment still and inexpensive that does it all and does the batch too. Once it detects the page it scans it automatically. Some of the other posts here include some pretty expensive apps that are recurring subscribers. If you want to save money and have a robust app that does exactly what the OP is looking for get Speech Central.