Hi. Is any of us US AppleVis peeps using the USPS Informed Delivery service? As I understand it, once you register for this service, the USPS sends an email with images of the mail that is on its way.
A friend with RP and an iPhone asked if there's a reliable way to make VoiceOver read the printed text from the images, for example, the sender's name and address for each piece of mail. More generally, if you receive an email with an image attachment, how would you read the text in the image?
One idea would be to go into VoiceOver Recognition and turn on Image Descriptions.
Another way would be to send the image to some type of AI to process and read, but this sounds cumbersome.
If anyone is using this service and has a simple method for reading names and addresses out of the images, let me know so I can pass it on. Thanks.
Comments
Re: USPS Informed Delivery I use it without difficulty
Hi, I have used this service for years both on a Windows pc but more often than not on my iPhone. VoiceOver has no difficulties detecting text in the images of mail pieces that appear in the daily emails I get. Even if it isn't 100% accurate it gives me enough information so that I have an idea of that which is coming in the form of mail or packages. I recommend it heartily. They also have an app and are apparently rolling out an update to that app but as I said I rarely interact with it as the emails themselves give me enough information so as to be useful. I hope that helps.
Thanks Robin
What is your workflow Robin?
I had a friend forward me one of these emails. My workflow was to turn on image descriptions as I mentioned in the original post, rotor over to images, then just flick down. Some of the images were purely decorative. But when it came to an image of a piece of mail, it read lots of alphanumberic gobbledy-gook, but buried in there was, quite often, the origin city and state, and maybe the sender name. So, yes, this does seem to be usable and informative, once you train yourself to flick past the decorative images and tuen out the noise.
Sighted Feedback
Just something to keep in mind. I have not used this app or service, although I am thinking of doing so, but some of my neighbors that do use it tell me that often these days what the informed delivery tells you is arriving on a particular day, and what actually arrives, are not always the same. Not trying to turn anyone off of the service, but that is the feedback I have gotten from sighted peers.
Reading Mail Delivery Message
I have Describe Images set to On for VoiceOver. Then when I read this message when I get to an image of the envelope VoiceOver reads the image name, which is a long list of digits ending with ".jpg" then it reads text on the picture usually starting with the sender. While the numbers are annoying this works quite well otherwise. I don't have it in my VoiceOver rotor, but if you do have navigate by images enabled, using this method may speed up navigating the message.
Note I tried screen recognition instead but it didn't improve the situation.
I usually do not check my email on iPhone but rather Windows with Outlook. So then my workflow is just to open Informed Delivery in my browser, and use JAWS's "picture smart" feature to describe the image of an envelope. Arguably this would be doable from right inside Outlook but it doesn't like to download images, and the emails are kind of messy.
The fastest/simplest workflow is probably using VoiceOver and just tolerating the digits and listening for ".jpg" and knowing the human-readable text comes after ".jpg". I don't se a way to get rid of them, at least without USPS's help and good luck with that.
Informed Delivery
Hi. I use this service. I am able to detect the text from the images on my iPhone in the emails I recieve. I also have image descriptions enabled on my phone. When I open an email VO states mail piece image and proceeds to read the gist after the long list of letters and numbers VO does read the sender. Hope this helps.:)
Thanks for everyone's help
My friend who uses this service complains that VoiceOver simply doesn't read any useful information for some pieces of mail. I suspect they are handwritten envelopes. I haven't been able to reproduce her problem with my limited tinkering.
A close examination of the Informed Delivery digest emails reveals no indication which email service they are using. I expected something like MailChimp.
However, the email footer contained a link to their help and supplort page. I sent them a courteous email (I know, right? Yes, a courteous email from me), pointing out that screen readers announce each image as random numeric junk, and mentioning that it would be a reasonable accomodation under the ADA if the USPS were to replace that random numeric junk with ALT text containing an OCR output. I know what year it is and who's in the White House. But, last time I checked, all government agencies are still required to comply with the ADA. So, let's wait and see what they say.
Your friend may want to…
Your friend may want to consider the new Speakaboo app, and the new shortcut that allows Speakaboo to read the names on mail/packages.