2014-03-12-Soft Skills 2 - Web viewAugust 12, 2015. Announcer. ... They have it in word and in DAISY. ... Picture 2 is Nabisco Graham Original] Aha! Nabisco Graham Original

Get the Picture

Seminars@Hadley

Get the Picture

Presented by Judy Dixon

Moderated by Doug Anzlovar

August 12, 2015

AnnouncerYou’re listening to Seminars@Hadley. This seminar is Get the Picture presented by Judy Dixon, moderated by Doug Anzlovar.

Doug AnzlovarWelcome to Seminars@Hadley, my name is Doug Anzlovar and I am the Vice President of Education and Training at the Hadley School. Today’s seminar is titled ‘Get the Picture’ and it’s presented by Judy Dixon. Judy works at the National Library Service as a Consumer Relations Officer. She has written five books about the iPhone for National Braille Press.

We’ll now hear a pre-recorded segment where Judy discusses how to use the iPhone camera to

©2014 The Hadley School for the Blind Page 1 of 38

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accomplish a variety of everyday tasks. A live question and answer session with Judy will follow.

Judy DixonHello. This is Judy Dixon. I am going to be talking about the many ways that an iPhone’s camera can be useful to a blind person. First, we’re going to start by talking about the thigs you need to think about when you’re going to use a camera and then after that we’ll get into some app demos and I’ll show you a whole lot of ways that you can use the iPhone’s camera.

We’re not going to talk too much today about artistic photography, but you can certainly do that too. It’s very cool, but I think for the most part today we’re going to talk about using the camera for those practical things that just make life a little bit easier.

This session is based on a book that I wrote. It’s called Get the Picture: Viewing the World with the iPhone Camera. It was published in early 2014 by National Braille Press. It’s a two-volume hard copy Braille book where they also have it in e-Braille, which is a BRF file format. They have it in word and in DAISY. It’s a great book if I do say so myself.

The first chapter talks about the considerations that you need to think about when taking pictures. Those


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are the ones I’m going to go over today and then Chapters 2 and 3 talk about the camera app, the photos app, kind of managing pictures and that sort of thing and then it goes through a lot of different activities with descriptions of the apps that will help you do those kinds of things like detecting light, identifying colors, recognizing objects, things like that.

I would just like to point out that I donated this book to National Braille Press, so they get to keep all the money and I can encourage all of you to buy it without feeling bad about it. So I do hope you do get it. It’s a great book.

Let’s begin by talking about taking pictures and the things you need to think about when you do that. I have identified seven considerations. Things to think about.

The first one is orientation. When you hold your iPhone straight up and down that is called portrait and when you hold it side-to-side so that the long way is going from left to right, that’s called landscape. Most pictures are taken landscape. This really surprised me, but somebody pointed out to me that actually vision is landscape.


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The human eye, the two eyes together have a field of view of 180 degrees from side to side and only 135 degrees up and down. So people, sighted people are used to seeing in landscape. Television is landscape, movies are landscape. That’s what people are used to seeing and most photographs are landscape. There’s also some that are square, but that’s another issue. That’s what Instagram uses, one of the popular photo sharing apps.

Unless you have a good reason – like you’re taking a picture of the Empire State Building, if you could get far enough away from it – unless you have a good reason to take a picture in portrait, you really should almost always use landscape.

The second one is distance. How far away do you need to be from something? Well, if it’s a scene, if it’s mountains or something like that, you might be a long way. But a lot of us just take pictures of objects and small things to have somebody identify it or to have an app recognize it.

A good rule of thumb for you to use is you need to be as far away as the thing is wide. So if you’re taking a picture of an automobile that’s about 10 feet long, you need to be about 10 feet back or 12 feet back. A little more doesn’t hurt. If you’re taking picture of a chair


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and it’s only two feet wide, you just need to be two or three feet back.

The third thing is background. You need to make sure that there aren’t any extraneous objects in the background of your picture such as half a dog or a dog’s foot or a single shoe or something like that. So just check and make sure there’s nothing in the background that shouldn’t be there.

The fourth thing is similar to that. It’s clutter. Is there stuff around? Is it going to make your picture look cluttered because the clutter that’s in the picture will detract from what you think is the main object.

The fifth one is lighting and glare. You do need to make sure that there’s enough light for your picture and the iPhone will take care of this to some degree, but it’s not great at it. So you will actually want to know that there’s enough light. If you don’t see light at all you might try using a light detector just to make sure there’s enough light around. That’s very helpful. And glare, is there anything reflective in the picture that might cause a reflection back to your camera such as glass, photographs with glass on the front or a glass door. Things like that can cause reflections.


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The sixth one is shadows. Is there anything being around that might be casting a shadow, or are you casting a shadow, or your hand or your arm. This can happen very easily.

And the last one is stability and level. It is very important that that camera be as still as possible when you take a picture or its going to be blurry. It also needs to be level. There’s an app called Camera Sharp. The developer made the level, it has a bubble level. So it indicates three different axes of levelness, and they made that bubble level audible. So it’s easy to hear when the iPhone is perfectly level.

So these are all the things you need to think about when you’re getting ready to take a picture. Now, let’s actually take out the iPhone and try some of this in practice and I’ll point out some of the considerations as we go along.

Now, we are going to rather quickly go through a series of apps that will show you how the iPhone’s camera can be used. We’re going to start with a really simple one. This app is called Light Detector, and what does it do? It detects light. [VoiceOver: Light Detector. Double tap to open. Light Detector] And as soon as you open the app, you will hear the continuous tone. Remember it’s the back-facing


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camera that’s going to be looking at the light. So we’re going to shine it around this room. There’s the window. There’s the other window. Is the celling light on? Nope, it’s not. Let’s turn it on. And there it is, it’s on.

Now, let’s try color identification. There are a lot of apps that do this, and I have not found one that I would say is anything close to perfect. Some, though, are a lot better than others. One of my favorites is an app called Color Advisor and it uses the iPhone’s video camera, so it continuously scans the world and reports the colors as it sees them.

So let’s open that now. [VoiceOver: Color Advisor. Double tap to open. Color Advisor. Orange, brown, orange] When you open this app, it immediately starts scanning and makes this tone to tell you that it is scanning. [VoiceOver: Rosie brown, brown] If you don’t like the tone, you can turn it off in settings. One of the things you want to do in this app, in the lower left corner, there is a button that says ‘torch’ and it’s off by default, so let’s turn it on. [VoiceOver: Base brown, orange] In general, when you’re identifying colors, the more light you can get the better.

So let’s see what color my shirt is. [VoiceOver: Still blue. Blue] Still blue, and it in fact is blue. [VoiceOver:


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Water blue] Water blue. It has a lot of opinions about what shade of blue it is. And let’s see what my pants are. [VoiceOver: Mouse grey. Grey]. Mouse grey. [VoiceOver: Dark grey, grey. Color Advisor. Double tap to open]

So there’s Color Advisor. There are a lot of settings in this app. You can change it from simple color names to fairly complex color names. You can turn on the front-facing camera if you prefer to use that one. It’s quite a nice app.

Now, let’s have a look at money identification. And by far the best app to do this is LookTel’s Money Reader. This app is a bit more expensive than some of the other apps we’ll be talking about today, but it’s very accurate and very fast and it’s a very, very nice app. So I think it’s well worth the 9.95 that it costs in the app store.

It can read about 21 different currencies from around the world including the US dollar, the Euro, the Canadian dollar, the Australian dollar and quite a few other ones. [VoiceOver: Money Reader] So we’ll run this now. [VoiceOver: Money Reader] And when you launch the app, it is running. There is nothing else you have to do. I have two bills here and what I’m going to do is just position the back-facing camera


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about six inches over the top of the dollar bill or the whatever it is bill. [VoiceOver: One dollar, one dollar, one dollar] One dollar, one dollar. And it will keep announcing it until you move the camera away from it. That was a one dollar bill. Let’s see what this other one is. [VoiceOver: $20, $20] $20. So it’s very fast and a really nice app. You can just hold the bill in your hand behind the camera and just be sure it’s not too close.

Let’s have a look at using the iPhone’s camera to scan text. I’m going to show you a couple of apps here. The first one is KNFB Reader. Now, this is certainly the most expensive app of the ones I’m going to show you today. It’s $99 in the app store. But because this app was designed for blind users, it is very easy to use. It is full-featured. It has way more than I’m going to be able to show you today, but let’s have a quick look at it. [VoiceOver: KNFB Reader. Double tap to open. KNFB Reader. File Explorer [button]

One of features in this app that I find very helpful, it has something called a field of view report, and this will give you an idea of how much of your document the KNFB reader can see at any particular time. So I have here a large card that came in the mail. It’s about a foot long and about six inches wide. So it’s


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pretty big. And I’m going to hold the camera about 10-12 inches over this card and we’re going to flick to the field of view report first.

[VoiceOver: Settings. Camera flash. [inaudible 0:13:24] items. Take picture. Field of view report button. Field of view report. All four inches are visible, rotated eight degrees counter clockwise] Ooh, I was pretty good with the ‘all four inches’, but the eight degrees, we’re going to rotate it clockwise a bit. [VoiceOver: Take pic. Field of view report] Try it one more time. [VoiceOver: All four inches are visible, rotated 0 degrees clockwise] Perfect.

[VoiceOver: Take picture button. Guaranteed. Admission agreements. Come to NOVA first. Finish that. The University of your choice. NOVA, Northern Virginia Community College] Great. That tells us that is a card from a Northern Virginia Community College, and that’s actually all I need to know about that card. If you wanted to know more details you could probably read the other side and there might be more.

Okay. Let’s try something a little more difficult. I have here a card, one of those small plastic cards that’s kind of like a credit card, but it doesn’t have any embossing. So let’s see what this is. Let’s try the field of view report first. [VoiceOver: Next sentence


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button] Well, we have to go back. [VoiceOver: Back button. Field of view report button. Top/bottom inches are visible, rotated 4 degrees clockwise] Top/bottom edges are visible so let’s raise it just a bit. [VoiceOver: Take picture button. Field of view report button. Record channel [inaudible 0:15:02] position. Top/bottom edges are visible, rotated 6 degrees clockwise]

Will raise it a little more. [VoiceOver: Take picture. Field of view report button. Field. Top/right bottom edges are visible, rotated 2 degrees clockwise. Take picture. Field of view report. Top/right bottom edges are visible, rotated 5 degrees clockwise. Take picture. Field of view report button. Field of... All four edges are visible, rotated 11 degrees clockwise] Ooh, that’s rotated. Back a bit. [VoiceOver: Take picture button. [inaudible 0:15:32] 0542 303. Authorized signature. Your Safeway Club card is accepted at participating Safeway and stores. This card belongs to Safeway and must be surrendered on request] Ah, that’s my Safeway Club card. Oh, good. Now I can put it in the right place.

Okay, let’s try another app. This app is called Prizmo. It’s a general purpose, mainstream scanning app, but it does have a lot of useful features. [VoiceOver: Prizmo. Double tap to open. Prizmo. Prizmo. Settings


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button] Let’s try these same two items. In the bottom, left corner of this app is something called ‘quick capture’. [VoiceOver: Prizmo. Heading. Quick capture. Selected mode is read text aloud button. Capture and process [inaudible 0:16:29] for specific purpose. Double tap and hold this button to change the mode] As you heard, this app even has hit text. But if we use quick capture, it will just scan it and read it and it’s not going to bug us about sending it anywhere.

[VoiceOver: Selected. Camera. No, flash, left. No visible page. Right. No visible page. Away. Back. No visible page. Left. No visible page. Left, left, left. No visible page. Up, up, up, up. Right, right. No visible page. Up, up, up, up. No visible page. Right. Page detected. Ready to shoot. Right. No visible page. Away. No visible… Take… Right. No visible page. Take picture. Heading. Processing. Cancel. Voice [inaudible 0:17:21]]

Okay. Let me tell you what happened there. When you run the app, it’s going to give guidance. Up, up, up, away, away, away, and when it finds the page and think’s it’s okay to read, it’ll say ‘page detected, ready to shoot’ and you can double tap anywhere and it will take the picture and scan. Well, it didn’t read very much of this card and the reason for that – I actually


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cheated a little bit and found out the reason for that – is that much of the text on this card is in inverse. That means it is light text on a dark background and this particular app does not read inverse, but the KNFB Reader does.

Let’s try the Safeway card now and see how well it does on that. [VoiceOver: Quick capture. Selected mode is read text aloud button. Quickly capture and process [inaudible 0:18:24] for specific purpose. Double tap and hold this button to change selected mode. Selected. Camera. Page flash. Don’t. Page detected. Ready to shoot. No visible page detected. Take picture. Heading. Don’t. processing. Cancel. Authorized signature. Your Safeway card is accepted at Safeway and Stores. This card guides to Safeway I and must be surrendered on request. [inaudible 0:18:55] card. The [inaudible 0:18:56] agrees to all terms under which eye. [inaudible 0:18:58] Safeway 0, Box 1 and C, 99. Camera. Page detected. Prizmo. Settings button]

So Prizmo did a little bit better on that one. At least we now we know that’s the Safeway Club card. The important thing to remember here is that using scanning apps, whichever one you use, takes a bit of patience, but if you do that, you can get some very usable results.


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One of the things that I often do with my iPhone’s camera is scan barcodes. I’m going to show you two apps that I use frequently. One of them is called Digit-Eyes. D-i-g-i-t hyphen E-y-e-s. Digit-Eyes is an app that was made specifically for blind users and it cost 9.99 in the app store. And I have here a can, a bottle, and a box. So here we go.

[VoiceOver: Digit-Eyes. Double tap to open. Step. Digit-Eyes] It’s a very simple interface. I’m going to flick to scan. [VoiceOver: Lists. Button. Scan button] Double tap. Then it clicks to tell us that it is scanning, and I’m going to pick up the can, hold it about six inches in front of the camera, rotate it. [VoiceOver: Looking up Glory Black Beans. 15.5 oz. 15.50 ounces] And Digit-Eyes told us that it was Glory Black beans, 15.5 ounces.

Now, it also beeped when it found the barcode. Digit-Eyes will beep when it finds a partial barcode to give you the idea that you are in the right vicinity. Let’s try the box. The barcode on this box is [VoiceOver: Scan button] – we have to double tap scan again. The barcode on this box is on the bottom, so I’m going to pick it up, hold it about six inches away. [VoiceOver: Looking up Nabisco Grahams. Original 14.40 ounces] Nabisco Grahams, and it did that one quite quickly,


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[VoiceOver: Done], but I knew where [VoiceOver: 347. Orientation log. Nabisco Grahams. More information. Nabisco… Scan. Done button] I knew where the barcode was. [VoiceOver: Scan button]

And we’ll try the bottle of wine. The bottle has the barcode on the back of it. [VoiceOver: Scanning. Tap twice to cancel. Looking up… Michael David Vineyard Seven Deadly Zins, Zinfandel 25.36 fluid ounces. Done button] Michael David Vineyards, Seven Deadly Zins Zinfandel.

Okay, one important thing about scanning barcodes is that you have to hold the camera somewhat still or move it very slowly. With Digit-Eyes, you really have to stop, move it a bit, stop, move it a bit, stop. The next app I’m going to show you is a little more forgiving in this regard. This is a mainstream app called Red Laser. Red Laser is free. There are advantages and disadvantages. There’s no perfect app.

So let’s try Red Laser. [VoiceOver: Red Laser. Double tap to open. Red Laser. Cancel button] You can configure Red Laser so that when you open the app it’s ready to scan and that’s what I’ve done. So I’m going to pick up the can of beans and we’ll see how well Red Laser can do.


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[VoiceOver: Light. Up button. Product. Back button] Now, it opens up the product screen, but you actually have to scan to the name of it. [VoiceOver: Product. Heading. Cards. Scan. $36. Gloria Black Beans. 15.5 ounces] Gloria Black Beans, so it knows what that is. Then when you want to scan again, in the top right corner is a scan button. [VoiceOver: Scan button. Cancel button] We’ll try the graham crackers. [VoiceOver: Product. Product. Back button] You got that very fast. [VoiceOver: Product. Cards. Scan. $2.99. Nabisco Grahams Original Graham Crackers. 14.4 ounces]

And we’ll try the last one. [VoiceOver: Cards button. Night scan button. Cancel button. Product. Product. Back button. Product. Cards. Scan. Seven Deadly Zins Zinfandel Wine 750 milliliters]

So it got all three fairly readily. The advantages of Red Laser is that I find it easier to actually find the barcode, especially when I don’t know where it is. And it has a light that you can turn on and sometimes that’s very helpful. The disadvantages are that you have to manipulate the screen just to go and find the name of the item, whereas Digit-Eyes will speak it automatically.


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The next app I’m going to demonstrate is TapTapSee. This is an app that you can use to take pictures of things, to identify them. The difficulty with TapTapSee is it doesn’t always work too well if you want to know the name of something. So we’ll give this a whirl and see how it goes.

The first thing I’m going to do is take a picture out my office window. Let’s see what it tells us is out there. [VoiceOver: TapTapSee. Double tap to open. TapTapSee. Repeat button] [crosstalk] The camera button is just above the home button. [VoiceOver: Camera button. Camera. Picture 1 in progress]

Okay, it’s taking the picture. It takes a few seconds for the answer to come back. So we’ll just hang out here and wait for that. [VoiceOver: Picture 1 is red brick house next to green tree] Red brick house next to green tree. That’s probably pretty accurate about what’s out there. [VoiceOver: Camera]

All right. Let’s try this again. [VoiceOver: Double tap to take a picture of what’s in front of you] This time we’re going to use the box of graham crackers. Now we happen to know that it’s graham crackers. What we don’t know is which side of the box is the front. Maybe graham crackers are recognizable from the back, I don’t know, but I’m going to hold it about


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maybe a foot from the box because it’s about a foot wide. [VoiceOver: Picture 1 is red brick house next to green tree. Camera button] And we’ll take a picture of it. [VoiceOver: Double tap to take a picture of what’s in front of you. Camera. Picture 2 is in progress]

Picture 2 is in progress. Let’s see what TapTapSee tells us. [VoiceOver: Picture 2 is Nabisco Graham Original] Aha! Nabisco Graham Original. So we can use TapTapSee to identify items.

The last kind of app I want to talk about and I’m not going to demonstrate it for time reasons is apps that you can use to contact another person for real-time assistance. A very popular one right now that you may have heard about is called Be My Eyes.

Be My Eyes has a network of about a quarter of a million people around the world, and you can run Be My Eyes and connect to another person using the camera on your phone. You show them what it is you want to know about and you can talk to that person and they can talk back to you, of course. And they can tell you what it is you’re asking about.

This is very useful. Sometimes Be My Eyes takes a while for the person to answer because it’s not contacting a lot of people at the same time. There are


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other apps that are in development that do essentially the same thing, but you can also use FaceTime. If you have a friend or a relative who has an iPhone or an iDevice of some kind, you can FaceTime with them and they can also use – there’s nothing special about the Be My Eyes camera. It’s really essentially FaceTime. It’s just that if you don’t happen to have somebody available that you can FaceTime with, you can do Be My Eyes at three in the morning and not wake up your friends.

So it’s a great app and I wish them well. That’s about it guys. Let’s see now, I think it’s probably time for questions. So I look forward to hearing what you think about all this and let’s take questions. Thanks very much.

CallerHi Judy. This is Paul Hunt in Austin. I’ve got a question for you. I’ve tried to use the Wells Fargo mobile scanning app and I was able to do it once using my [pro 0:28:23] camera kind of as a guide, but there’s an automatic feature on there, does that – hadn’t been able to get that to work because it gives you some minimal feedback, but it’s not all that helpful.


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CallerWhat I push? Use for – have trouble reading the street signs.

Judy DixonOkay. Yes, I have used the Wells Fargo app, but I’ve taken a somewhat different approach to it. I actually use it with my StandScan and for those of you who don’t know what that is, it’s a cardboard box that’s held together by magnets. You can just kind of assemble it. In fact, I’m going to have a hole in the top where you can put your iPhone. The advantage is the [signature 0:29:07] you’re trying to read are held at a consistent distance. It has lights in it so you can connect either a battery pack or an AC power.

Anyway, I had a friend help me make a template for the check. But I just have a piece of cardboard with little corners noted where the corners of the check go and made that with [aluminum 0:29:31] tape and I made it for two sizes of check. So that’s been real successful depositing checks with Wells Fargo.

Douglas AnzlovarThanks Judy. I notice there are some questions coming into the text chat. So as long as I have the microphone, I’m going to go ahead and scroll back up here. The first question that came in early on: If you


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have your orientation locked on your phone because you use VoiceOver, can you still take pictures landscape, and if so, how do you do that?

Judy DixonThat’s a great question. I do have my orientation locked in portrait. I guess, probably, most of us, [inaudible 0:30:15] users do that. Yes, it just overrides it. It knows. It’s very smart. It knows when to go into landscape and when not to. If you turn your phone sideways and take your picture landscape, it will take it landscape whether your orientation is locked or not.

Douglas AnzlovarGreat. Thanks Judy. Let’s see if there’s a few more here in the text chat. What is the cost of TapTapSee. I know early on it was free. Is there now a charge for it?

Judy DixonThere is a charge and it’s by the number of pictures or the time. You can look in the app, but last I knew it was something like 7.95 for 100 pictures or 9.95 a month for unlimited or 5.95 a month for unlimited. I don’t remember, but anyway, they have a price for unlimited, one month or two months. They also have a price for the number of pictures. I did the 7.95 for


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100 pictures and I haven’t used 100 pictures in six months.

Douglas AnzlovarOkay. Great. And then there’s an inquiry here. Do you happen to know the cost of the Be My Eyes?

Judy DixonBe My Eyes is free. There’s no charge for the app and there’s no charge for using it. Once you […Be My Eyes… 0:31:31]. It can take as much as 10 or 15 minutes for a person to answer, but sometimes they answer right away.

Douglas AnzlovarOkay. Great. The next comment here is: When I take the landscape picture, only the bottom half of the picture shows on the screen. It is the whole picture. So do you have –

Judy DixonWhat he needs to do is tip your phone down more. It’s kind of hard to think about you wanting more of the picture, so you want to angle the phone down, just rotate it so that the top edge is [inaudible 0:32:13] because you have it in landscape – I understand that. But so the top of the angle is more down.


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Douglas AnzlovarAnd someone has an app on their iPad called QR Code Wizard, and do you have any sense of how that app is or do you know of that app?

Judy DixonI haven’t used that app, no. I’ve had a lot of other QR code apps when I was working on the Get the Picture book, and that was not one of them. But I find Red Laser works really well for QR codes as well as barcodes. That’s what I generally use.

Douglas AnzlovarOkay. Thanks Judy. That looks to be all the text chat questions that I’ve seen. So I’m going to go ahead and release the microphone. I see we have a few people waiting to ask some questions. So releasing the mic now to the audience.

CallerGreat presentation Judy. This is Alan. So when you’re – I’ve got my phone locked in portrait mode too, so if you need to turn landscape, do you get better results if you pivot it clockwise to get it in landscape mode versus counter clockwise. My tendency is to go clockwise so that my home button’s on the left before I take a picture. Does it make a difference?


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Judy DixonIt helps if you rotate it so that the volume controls are facing up because the way the camera app is set up, if the volume controls on the side of your phone are facing up, you can use the volume control to actually ask the shutter button to take the picture. So I guess that’s the way they intended for you to do it.

CallerHello. This is [inaudible 0:34:04] from Pittsburgh. I have trouble reading the signs on the street and also the name of the store above the store. Is there any app that does help with those two items? Thank you.

Judy DixonThere’s actually an app called Google Goggles, I think it is, that can scan text at a fair distance. I’ve had some pretty good luck, but it’s a bit hit or miss. I wouldn’t want to just take it and go shopping and expect it to work every day. You’re probably best off with an app like Be My Eyes where you can connect with a human who can read those for you.

CallerIs there an app that’s good at identifying credit cards? I’m usually, you know, I have them organized well in my wallet, but sometimes I’ll get them put in a place


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where I can’t find them, then all of a sudden I wouldn’t know which one’s which unless I had some kind of an app to read it or somebody with me that can download.

Judy DixonKNFB Reader would probably do a pretty good job at that. One of the tricky things with credit cards is there’re a lot of funny, different colors and you might have a credit card that has a red text on a yellow background and a lot of traditional scanning apps have difficulty with that, even the scanner would have trouble with it. But I find KNFB Reader does quite well with things that are multiply colored. I haven’t – that was the Safeway card that I was reading in the demo, is somewhat like a credit card because it was a red card and I think that KNFB Reader would probably work pretty well for that.

CallerHi. This is Kelly Sapurgio from [inaudible 0:35:51] Saskatchewan County. I’ve got an iPod Touch 5th Generation, but I’ve never used the camera before on it really as far as if I wanted to take a picture of something. Now, I don’t know if you’ve used the iPod, but do you think its better, like the camera – is the iPod sufficient for that, or would an iPhone be better to take good, quality pictures?


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CallerMy light detector has quit working and I have reinstalled it and tried to get it to work again, and it quit. Do you have a suggestion what I might do with that? And also I have a difficulty finding barcodes. Can you give us some hints on how to find a barcode when you’re totally blind?

Judy DixonLet me see if I can remember all this. Okay. Sir from Saskatchewan, what a lovely place. I’m going to go backwards because I remember the last ones better. Barcodes. Very often, if it’s a box, it’s almost always either on the bottom or the side, one of the small parts of the box. You’ll find exceptions to this, but that’s what usually works. If it’s a can, the barcode is usually near the seam and usually near the bottom. So, you’ll find there’s a lot of consistency where the barcodes are and there are places to look first.

As far as your light detector goes, one thing I’ve found is a lot of these camera apps do not like screen curtain. So if you use your screen curtain regularly, you want to turn it off when you’re doing things like that. That’s a possibility.


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Oh, poor gentleman from Saskatchewan, I’ve now forgotten your question. Remind me. Thanks.

CallerIt’s a different question. A couple of them. One, is there a way to turn off the buzzing sound in Color Advisor because I think that would actually be more distracting sometimes. My second question is does Color Advisor cost, and I guess my third question is: Is there a photo app that’s accessible that makes it easier for you to take a picture with your camera or if you’re talking a picture of a person. I downloaded Guided Photo Pro, but it doesn’t seem very accessible, so I’m interested if there are any photo apps that work well and also how do you start to take a video instead of a picture. So I guess several questions. You can answer them as you’re able and get others in as well.

Judy DixonOh, I remember it was about the iPod. Okay, I don’t know the exact specs between the difference of the camera of the iPod 5th Generation and the iPhone 6, but I did have an iPod 5th Generation a while back and it does have a camera and it does a good job. I was able to use it for things like TapTapSee and so forth. You don’t need a high-quality picture for that.


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So have fun with your camera. It’s great to take pictures and email them to people and say “What’s this?” There’s a whole chapter in the book about sharing photos and how you can share them through iCloud and so forth, and I’ve had a great time sharing pictures when I’ve been somewhere and I didn’t know what something was and I just take a picture of it and send it to somebody.

Yes, in Color Advisor, there is a setting to turn off the sound. And the sound can be quite annoying, so yes, you can do that. I don’t recall how much Color Advisor is. It will tell you in the app store, but I don’t recall. If there’s a cost, it’s not very much. And you asked one other thing that I’ve now forgotten.

CallerColor Advisor’s $4.99 in the US app store.

CallerHi Judy. This is Kristina from New Jersey, and I want to tell you I read your book and it was wonderful. And I love the feature how to label pictures.

Judy DixonYeah, I do too. It’s just describing the feature is – to create a photo just simply like it’s a graphic, which it is, and use the label graphic speaker, that two finger,


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double tap and a hold – to make a label for your photo and label it. I do stress in the book, I can’t promise that it will survive forever, but it’s worked well for me.

CallerJudy, I have one quick question, I asked in the text chat, but it wasn’t answered. That’s okay. I’m from Idaho. I’d like to be able to take a picture of my dog and maybe another animal and things like that. Is that possible if they’re standing still or sitting? If so, how can one that doesn’t have any sight do that?

Judy DixonI’ve taken lots of pictures of my dog and yes, I’ve cut off his ears and I’ve cut off his feet. My approach to that is to take four or five pictures and if I really want to share a nice looking picture, I’ll send several pictures to a friend and say which one of these is best and my friend will tell me which one. But, yeah, you can do it. My best advice is get back a little further than you might actually need to to get the whole dog and you’ll have a better chance. You might get a little bit more background than it would be, strictly speaking necessary, but you’ll have a better chance of getting all your dog’s parts in the picture.


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CallerMy name’s Eric, I’m wondering what the best app would be for taking pictures of checks.

Judy DixonDo you mean like to deposit checks?

CallerAnything, deposit, writing checks, anything like that.

Judy DixonWell, for depositing checks, you’ll need to use the app that your bank has associated with it. So whatever bank you have, just ask them what their mobile app is and that’ll be a specific app for that.

CallerHello. [inaudible 0:42:10] again, from Pittsburgh, I’m wondering would you say there’s – I know that KNFB Reader is like $100, but is there any other application that is comparable for reading text that does a satisfactory job and is not as pricey. Thank you.

Judy DixonYou should also watch the sales. KNFB Reader does go on sale once in a while. It was $49 for a little while a few months ago and it was $75 during the NFE Convention. So it does go on sale. But I think there


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are two other apps, TextGrabber works quite well, and Prizmo. Prizmo has a lot of nice features for blind people and has a feature where it’ll tell you if your phone is level and it’s one of the ones I demonstrated in the presentation.

The other thing Prizmo will do is it has a stability mode so that it won’t actually take the picture until the camera is still. That’s really helpful because these iPhone cameras really want things to be as absolutely still as possible. Both apps are around $4. One’s 4.95, and one’s 5.95.

CallerOne more question. When you’re using a StandScan Pro, where should the camera – there’s a hole where you put the camera. Should the top of the phone be facing to the left or to the right?

Judy DixonI usually put it parallel to the long way so that the camera is centered in the little hole and then my phone is parallel to the length of the StandScan. It kind of depends on what you’re taking a picture of, but that will give you a portrait picture.


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CallerYes, my question is if you’re using the back-facing camera, I’m assuming then you want the actual screen of your phone facing away from you and you want the back of your phone facing you with your home button on the right and your volume button’s on the top left edge, is that right? Also, do you find, or would you think that having a stand would make using the KNFB Reader app easier. I have the app and am considering buying a stand and I’m up for recommendations.

Judy DixonNo, actually, if you’re using the back-facing camera, the back-facing camera faces away from you. So the back of the phone faces away. So you have the screen of the phone facing you and you have the back of the phone facing away. That’s how you remember back-facing. Yes, a stand really does help. It helps a lot. I personally like the StandScan because it has light.

One of the other variables that’s really hard to control is how much light is on this document, and are there shadows and all those things I talked about. The StandScan just eliminates all your worry about is there enough light, is there too much light, is something casting a shadow. It’s very easy to use. In


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the book, there’s a good description on how to set it up and how to collapse it, but once you – I had a lot of trouble at first – but once you do it a few times and understand how to do it, you can do it in just a couple of seconds. It’s really – it’s a cool device.

CallerJudy, where do you get the scan stand?

Douglas AnzlovarYou can order it online. You can go to StandScan, s-t-a-n-d-s-c-a-n.com, or you can order it from Amazon, if you use Amazon regularly. I think it’s 29.95. They have two. There’s one without light and one with light, and I think the StandScan Pro is with light. You really want to get the one with light. It’s $5 more and it’s much better.

Douglas AnzlovarJudy, this is Doug again. There’s a question in the text chat here. Have you found a template to be the best way to deposit a check with your bank’s mobile app? I’m wondering if they’re meaning the template to make sure that the check is actually in view of the camera. We’d love some insights.


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Judy DixonYeah, that’s exactly how I do it with a template. A friend of mine helped me make it. It’s kind of a one-time thing and I’m able to use it now. We used labeling tape, like [inaudible 0:46:54] tape to make corners, and so I just put the check into the corners, and you have to take a picture of the front and the back of the check. It works really well. With the StandScan and my template, there’s a chapter in the book about depositing checks. So I find it works real well.

CallerIs there an app that you recommend that’s best for actually taking pictures of your face or of your kid or something? Is there an app that’s best for that, that gives you some guidance or is the camera good enough on its own? Just curious.

Judy DixonThere’s been a lot of work done on apps for guidance. There’s a couple of different university projects that have worked on apps, but as far as I know, there’s nothing in the app store yet that’s come out of any of these projects. Generally, they don’t finish them. So when I just want to take pictures, I use the camera app, just of a person or whatever. And as I said what I tend to do is take several and then get somebody to


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tell me which one’s the best one. Usually one of them is not too bad.

I just remembered a question that a lady asked earlier, and that is how do you take a video versus a picture. In the camera app, there is a slider that you can slide between camera – it’s photo, square, if you want a square picture for something like Instagram, or video and there’s other – oh, there’s Slow Mo, you can take slow motion video and then there’s Pana. And Pana is for taking a panorama picture and that’s quite fun because the camera app gives you a lot of guidance as you’re turning in a circle to take your Panorama picture and tells you if you’re going too fast or too slow. But it’s really fun. I have no idea how people look at those, but apparently they look cool.

CallerI was wondering – I usually use an i.d. mate to find my UPC on my items, but after it gives you the UPC code, it also tells you what’s in the can or box and tells you the directions like how to make the cake. Do any of the other apps do that?

Judy DixonYes. Digit-Eyes will give you all that kind of information. It’ll give you the directions. It’s not – it doesn’t seem to have it as often as the i.d. mate does.


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The i.d. mate’s a great device and it does a good job at giving you a lot of information. But Digit-Eyes can do that.

Douglas AnzlovarOkay, everyone, this is Doug, the moderator again. Let’s take one or two final questions for Judy, and then we will have to bring the seminar to a close. This has been just an outstanding topic and there’s so many uses of the iPhone camera. So let’s do one or two more questions and then we’ll bring things to a close.

Okay, Judy, well, I think I must’ve [stumbled 0:50:09] our conversation here, but we’ll go ahead and bring the seminar to a close. I’m going to hand the microphone back over to Judy for some closing comments, Judy, and then I will be launching the feedback survey for the participants in the room for you all to go in and offer us some feedback from today’s seminar. So Judy, the microphone is yours.

Judy DixonThanks Doug. I think that cameras can be a little bit intimidating for blind people. So, it’s kind of scary because you don’t want to take a picture that looks stupid or that somebody’s going to laugh at. But if you – when you start taking pictures, you can actually


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get better at it. As I say in the book, I can’t promise your pictures will always be perfect, but you can get better at it, and really learn what the issues are that you have to pay attention to.

It’s really quite fun. I’ve had an enormously good time taking pictures of places that I go and what’s out there. I had a great time when I was in Alaska taking pictures of a glacier and I sent the pictures back and people could actually see it. I thought that was fun. So I encourage you, just try it. It’s really great fun to take pictures. So thanks very much Hadley for hosting this seminar. It’s been great. Thanks guys.

Douglas AnzlovarJudy, thank you again for participating today and offering all this great information, and for the participants Judy mentioned her book early on in the recording. So, definitely feel free to check that out.

This seminar recording will be available on Hadley’s website at www.hadley.edu. Seminars@Hadley recordings are available 24/7. Each of our popular seminars is now available as a podcast, which you can download and listen to on your computer or mobile device.


http://www.hadley.edu/

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For those of you who are on Twitter, Hadley’s Twitter hashtag is #SeminarsAtHadley, all one word. And the ‘s’ in seminars, the ‘a’ in at and the ‘h’ in Hadley are all capitalized. So again, that’s #SeminarsAtHadley.

Again thanks everyone so much for participating today. Thanks again everyone and have a great afternoon and evening depending on which time zone you’re in.


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