I have two severely visually impaired people in my family. And I’m affected myself — colors often carry little information for me. So Vision isn’t the first app in this series for selfish reasons, but because it’s the one where I can genuinely speak from experience. I know what it’s like when a notice in text or image form isn’t a notice at all, because you can’t make it out in the first place.
Icons are not access
Plenty of apps have icons and consider themselves accessible. But what good is an icon to someone who can’t recognize it — and whose position changes with the next update anyway? If you’re not affected yourself, it’s genuinely hard to put yourself into this challenge. It’s not about the checkbox — „well, we did something“. It’s about real access. And that only begins where an icon alone is no longer enough.
What was on my mind while building
Everyday situations where sight is needed but momentarily unavailable: a package in the supermarket, a letter in the mailbox, a room you enter and don’t know, an object you’re looking for but can’t find by touch.
What already works today
- Read text aloud (OCR) — point the camera, the app reads out what’s written
- Describe scene — the app describes what’s currently in front of the camera
- Find object — search for a specific item in the camera’s field of view
- Product scan — recognize and name packaging
- Detect light/color — for everyone for whom color carries little or no information
- Camera magnifier — zoom, contrast filters, lighting for residual vision
All six modes are real, no mockups. Verified on two test devices (Galaxy S23 and S25).
Why this is the hardest construction site
Vision is complex — even modern AI models struggle with interpreting images. And without a partner from the AI industry, we currently have limited access to the really good models and the right hardware in this early phase. That’s exactly why the biggest gaps are here, honestly.
But even if only the magnifier function remained: that alone can save someone’s day. Sometimes that’s exactly enough.
This series: Part 1 — Why I’m building these apps · Part 2 — Accessibility isn’t a nice-to-have