Hello,
My name is Marshall Walters, and I'm the sole developer of SonifEye, an app that was just released on the iOS App Store. SonifEye is a sensory tool that makes the visual element of color accessible through sound. SonifEye transforms the colors of any image into musical notes, and it teaches you to recognize this color by ear at your own pace.
I created SonifEye to be used by the blind and visually-impaired community. Up to this point, I've been working closely with my grandfather who has macular degeneration to refine the VoiceOver support and haptic guidance. This being said, it would mean a great deal to get the AppleVis community's honest opinion and perspective, so that SonifEye can continuously improve as an assistive technology.
Any and all feedback as well as new feature requests are welcome. Please note that at least iOS 18 is required and that this app is designed for iPhone and iPad as of right now.
If interested, here is the link to the App Store to learn more: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/sonifeye/id6701998780
Thank you,
Marshall
Comments
Downloading Now
As someone who is fully blind since birth this sounds very interesting.
Interesting Approach to the Tutorial
It's an interesting approach you took with using Direct Touch and guiding users to buttons and other areas. I'd be interested to know the advantage of this, rather than using standard navigational controls.
I am slowly training my ear to use this. Very cool idea!
Hey remixman, about the tutorial...
Thank you for the feedback; due to the low quantity of interactable elements and the fact that the location of buttons and screen elements won't ever change, my aim with the tutorial was to focus on teaching the location of the buttons on the screen and what they do. That being said, I'd be curious to learn more about the 'standard navigational controls' that you typically use to see how I could include support for them. I plan to learn more to better understand!
Separately, it's awesome to hear that you've decided to start training your ear--just so you know, I have various enhancements in the works to keep the training mode as fun and efficient as possible. That being said, let me know if you hit any rough spots or overly difficult questions along the way so I can ensure to address those areas!!
Not available in Poland
Hi,
I'd love to try this out, however when clicking on the link I get told the app is not available in my region.
Interesting
As a formal sighted person for 18 years, how does sound describe colors? Red, blue and yellow. Also the many shade of blues and reds and yellows. Just asking.
Hey Piotr Machacz, availability in Poland and EU...
Thank you for the interest; I'm happy to say that SonifEye is now available in Poland and the EU in general for download! Hope you have fun.
Hey Holger Fiallo, about how sound describes color...
SonifEye uses musical notes to represent specific colors and their shades; each color has a unique musical identity that doesn't change so that the musical identity can be learned through the low-stress quiz mode! It is my top priority for a user of SonifEye to be able to truly learn to hear color using SonifEye.
The current mapping of colors and their musical notes was decided by working with a small group of people in my life as well as considering how each color appears in the world around us. In the future, I'd welcome the opportunity to run proper user studies, or, even, if the community would like it, give users the opportunity to configure it as they'd prefer.
marshall.walters
Nice. Sounds like a cool app. What about when is not to bright in the room, will it be able to recognize the colors. Most apps have issues with colors or if there are many colors on the shirt. Long live cats.
Color
So if I get a shirt how I would know is red or blue? I know you said the tome will tell but if I got a shirt for the first time, how I would know a sound is red or blue or rose color? Thanks. Long live cats.
Hey Holger Fiallo, about dark rooms and colors...
When taking a picture, SonifEye can only make use of what the camera captures. In a dark room, I'd recommend that you use the camera flash in order to get the most vibrant color to appear if that is what you want. If you take a picture in a dark room without flash, you'll know because you'll likely get a lot of black as well as very dark shades of various colors only. This can still be pretty cool, but can also be a flag that maybe you want to use the camera flash to pull the other color out of the dark.
To your question about how to be able to tell colors apart for the first time, I'd recommend you use the 'Color Touch' and the 'Color Reveal' features in the app. 'Color Touch' allows you to use your finger, or stylus, to tap anywhere on the image and hear the color name right away. So, you could tap on the red shirt and hear 'Red' right away after you take the picture and it loads! Also, 'Color Reveal' will list out the colors found in the image, so that you can scroll through the major colors and their variants SonifEye found in the image. The buttons to access these two features appear at the top of the phone.
Hope this helps!