Product Review: Envision Mobile App

In the spirit of all of this pandemic-induced home-schooling and distance learning — and as a way of demonstrating my own personal commitment to continuing education and self-improvement — the other day I decided to take a break from my normal routine to demo a new product that had recently been recommended to me.

Envision is a versatile smartphone app that assists blind or low-vision users with completing an assortment of common, everyday tasks that require basic visual recognition. It ultimately helps contribute to the blind and low-vision community’s independence by effectively putting technology that is able to describe the world around them at their fingertips, all in real-time.

Recognizing the many challenges facing individuals with visual impairments, Envision sums up this problem and describes their resulting solution and mission in the following way:

“90% of all information processed by the human brain is visual information. Losing access to this significant amount of information can be limiting and isolating. Envision is on a mission to make all the visual information around us accessible to everyone.” 

How It Works

Basically, Envision uses the built-in camera on a smartphone or tablet to simulate the person’s field of vision, allowing the user to then select from a number of options to process the images being displayed through the device’s viewfinder. 

For example, under the “text” setting, low-vision users can enlarge images from 10% to 100% times magnification while all manner of print (everything from street signs to hand-written notes to full documents) can be scanned and quickly converted over into synthesized speech by harnessing the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) feature.

Under the “general” setting, there are options for describing the scene around you, which consists of taking a picture and having the app give you its “best guess” as to what it thinks you are looking at. It also has a feature for detecting colors, as well as a built-in barcode scanner for identifying a wide range of consumer products.

One of the other unique features about Envision is its ability to learn. Users have the option of teaching it to recognize people’s faces or commonly used items, so you can then utilize the “scan and find” setting to pick out a friend in a crowded restaurant or scan around the living room to locate where you set down your collapsible cane.

Putting the Envision app through its paces

For this review, I spent parts of three days casually playing around with the Envision app. In an ideal world, I would try to fully test out and understand all of the app’s features and functionality over the course of several weeks, or even months. Just keep this in mind as you read about my first impressions of the app. Also, just for reference, I have been demoing the Envision app out on an older iPhone 6S, so the experience might be different for other people using newer iPhones or Android devices. 

For the sighted readers who might be interested in recreating what the experience is like for a blind or low-vision user, please note that you will first have to enable the “voiceover” feature on your iPhone. This can be done by going into Settings > General > Accessibility and switching on “voiceover”. You can also do this using Siri, by pressing your home key (on iPhone 8 or older) and saying “turn on voiceover”. Just keep in mind that there are different finger swipes and gestures when “voiceover” is enabled on the iPhone, so it might take some getting used to. 

Finally, due to the current Covid-19 lockdown, my exploration of the app has been limited to my immediate surroundings (i.e. testing out the face recognition feature on members of my family, scanning objects that we have around the house or we encounter during our walks through the neighborhood). Once things get back to normal, I look forward to testing the app out in more diverse environments.

With all of that said, here are the things about the Envision app that I really liked, and at least a few things that could maybe use a little improvement.

Getting Started

In terms of set-up, it was relatively easy to download and install the app onto my phone. There was a pretty basic email verification process that was required to activate my account, and once I was up and running, each new feature I tried out included a brief explanation of what it did and how to use it. One criticism (if you even want to call it that) is that once you have tried out a feature, the descriptions aren’t displayed again the next time you go back into that particular option. However, the app is rather intuitive to use, so it wasn’t hard to figure out that I just needed to go into the “help” setting and select the “read tutorials” option for refreshers on specific topics.

Reading Text

Using Envision's start reading instantly feature on a street sign.

By far, the “start reading instantly” option is my favorite feature of this app. As a person with a visual impairment, I often joke that printed material is like Kryptonite to blind people. Well, with the Envision app, that’s simply no longer the case. It’s not 100 percent accurate. Honestly, no Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology is. But, Envision makes it easy to do things like organize documents or sort through the mail, something that used to be a multi-step process that involved using a laptop in combination with a peripheral device to scan in, digitize and convert the document into readable text using separate OCR software. When it came to deciphering handwritten text there were mixed results, but again, considering what I had before, I’ll take a technology that works most of the time if the alternative is having nothing at all.

Reading Documents

For the “read document” feature, I liked how when you go to take the photo of the document, the app will tell you whether all edges are visible, which is especially helpful for blind and low-vision users who might otherwise struggle with determining what the appropriate distance and angle should be for getting the entire document in frame. After capturing an image, the app did an excellent job of accurately reproducing the document, and it was super easy to read through the text, export the information by saving it as a text file and/or sharing through text or email, etc.

Finding Objects

Under the “find object” option, you can select from a default “objects list” of 50+ items to locate things like a cup, laptop, handbag or bench. You can include frequently searched objects under the “favorites” heading, and you have the ability to customize your object inventory by using the “teach Envision” feature. Users also have the option of contacting Envision to request that missing objects be added. 

Finding Persons

The “find persons” option is definitely more useful if you take the time to teach Envision how to recognize your friends and family. Again, this was a relatively simple process that involved taking 5-10 photos of the person and saving their information.

The one drawback that I have noticed during my limited experimentation with the “scan and find” feature of the app, or any of the other features for that matter, is that I’m not sure how well the app will work in low-light settings when it is more difficult for the camera to detect objects or faces. Seems like an obvious thing to point out, but for users who are totally blind whose first instinct isn’t necessarily to switch on a light when entering a room, this is just something that you’re going to want to keep in mind.

Scanning Barcodes

Like some of the other features I tried out, I had somewhat mixed results with the barcode scanner. The biggest challenge was having to use my one hand to rotate the items around until I could properly position the barcode so that it was visible to the camera, while continuing to hold the device in my other hand. As you would imagine, smaller items like canned goods were easier to handle than larger items like boxes of cereal, but even then there were a number of products whose barcodes weren’t recognized or don’t seem to be supported by the app which was somewhat frustrating.

Some Other Things to Consider

There are a few additional items that I would want to caution prospective users about. At least with my experience, there was occasionally some lag in terms of the app’s performance. Again, this could be because I was using an older iPhone 6S, or due to the fact that the app does rely, at least in part, on maintaining a decent internet connection, which is always a challenge in a household full of kids playing Xbox and a bored wife constantly streaming shows on Netflix. Another thing to keep in mind is that you can quickly drain your battery if you’re not careful. If you are not diligent about closing out of the app after each use, you can easily set your phone down with whatever feature you were last using still actively running, and you might not realize it until the next time you go to pick your phone up to use it.

As grateful as I am that this app exists for blind and low vision users, I can’t help but think what a wonderful literacy tool Envision could be for individuals with learning disabilities. Again, I know that’s not its intended purpose, but what makes tools like this so valuable is recognizing its broad application and potential impact on these other segments of the population, who it turns out, could equally benefit from having access to technology that is able to verbalize scanned text to help with reading comprehension.

And if you have liked everything you have read about the Envision app so far, you’ll probably be interested in knowing about their latest venture with Google Glass. Right now, customers can pre-order the soon-to-be-released Envision Glasses – the new AI-powered smart glasses by Envision. Just based on the information that they have put out so far, you better believe that I’m looking forward to trying out this new, wearable technology. However, these smart glasses will come with a hefty sticker price, retailing for about $2000 in U.S. dollars. So, this is definitely not going to be one of those impulse-type purchases.

Key Take-aways

In summary, the app’s overall portability coupled with the multiple different options at the user’s disposal allow Envision to live up to its claim of being a virtual “Swiss Army knife” for addressing a variety of visual recognition needs. In other words, the clunkiness or unpredictability of any one feature can usually be overcome by leveraging the app’s other options to compensate for the supposed deficiency. Instead of having just one specific tool, Envision is like having a whole tool-box, if one doesn’t work for a particular job, you grab a different one to try. Case in point, for any products that you are not able to identify with the barcode scanner, you could always use the “start reading instantly” feature to have the product label read aloud, or low-vision users could try the magnifier feature to blow the label up large enough to where they could make out some of the letters.

Example of Envision’s “Magnifier” tool for reading text.

Based on how easy it is to use, its overall versatility and its ability to continually learn from its users, Envision is definitely an app that every visually impaired individual should download onto their smartphone or tablet.

Learn more about Envision and/or download the app by visiting: https://www.letsenvision.com/

Are you an individual with a visual impairment and have other assistive technology that you would recommend I try out? Are you a vendor interested in having your product or service showcased? Email me at: Chris@knappstrategic.com.