AppleVis Community Inducts GoodMaps Explore and lire Into Its iOS App Hall of Fame

By AppleVis, 20 May, 2023

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

We are thrilled to announce the induction of GoodMaps Explore and lire: RSS Reader into the AppleVis iOS App Hall of Fame.

First opened in 2011, the AppleVis iOS App Hall of Fame is a way for our community to honor developers who are committed to making their apps fully accessible to blind and low vision users. The inductees transform lives, empower individuals, provide invaluable information, and bring joy and entertainment to users. They represent the very best in accessible iOS applications, and the AppleVis community has selected GoodMaps Explore and lire as the next two apps to gain this prestigious recognition.

To be eligible for induction, apps must demonstrate excellence in design, functionality, and operation, and be fully accessible to blind and low vision users. They must have been available in the App Store for a significant period of time, under active development, and come from developers who have shown a long-term commitment to full accessibility. In short, the Hall of Fame showcases the best of the best in accessible iOS applications, as decided by the AppleVis community.

Existing inductees include BARD Mobile, Be My Eyes, Blind Legend, BlindSquare, Dice World, Envision AI, NFB-NEWSLINE® Mobile, Seeing AI, Timecrest, Voice Dream Reader, and Weather Gods. Check out the full list on the Hall of Fame page.

Voting for the 2023 inductions was held from May 15, 2023 through May 20, 2023. Voting was open to all blind and low vision members of our community who did not have any affiliation with the app they were voting for.

About the 2023 AppleVis iOS App Hall of Fame Inductees

GoodMaps Explore

GoodMaps Explore is designed for individuals who are blind or visually impaired, providing accurate indoor and outdoor information and navigation. The app offers location awareness with customizable notifications about the user's immediate surroundings, including current direction, nearest room, street, and points of interest (POIs). Users can set the frequency of these notifications and save their favorite POIs, which are automatically preserved. The app also offers accurate indoor directions for independent travel within mapped indoor venues. The LookAround feature enables users to discover POIs in the direction they point their phone, while the Virtual Mode allows them to explore the surroundings of outdoor POIs or search for indoor POIs virtually. Additional features include tutorials for easy setup, POI search indoors and outdoors, locating nearby intersections, integration with Be My Eyes for live visual assistance, and access to restricted buildings with a registered account.

Download GoodMaps Explore from the App Store

lire: RSS Reader

lire is designed for RSS feed enthusiasts. It addresses the common annoyance of websites offering only partial entries in their feeds to entice readers to visit their sites. Unlike other RSS feed readers, lire eliminates the need to click through to websites by converting partial feeds into full feeds. This means users can access their favorite RSS feeds without being redirected or having to click on "Read more" or "Continue reading" links. lire also offers offline access to cached full-text feeds, allowing users to read without an internet connection. Additionally, the app provides options to use it as a standalone feed reader, sync with iCloud, or sync with various services such as Feedly, Feedbin, FeedHQ, The Old Reader, Inoreader, BazQux Reader, Newsblur, Feed Wrangler, FreshRSS, Miniflux, Nextcloud News, and Tiny Tiny RSS. Lire offers dedicated customization options for VoiceOver users, allowing them to personalize the speech preferences and prioritize the order of spoken feed article information.

Download lire: RSS Reader from the App Store

We extend our sincere congratulations to GoodMaps Inc and Kunal Sood for their exceptional work on GoodMaps Explore and lire, respectively, and their positive and tangible impact on the lives of blind and low vision users. We also appreciate the efforts of all the developers of the other shortlisted apps for induction this year, which were worthy nominees and garnered support from our community members during the vote. To see the full list of inductees, as well as more information on the Hall of Fame, visit the Hall of Fame page.

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Comments

By Gar on Tuesday, May 23, 2023 - 09:27

I'll be honest, I'm glad the winners this year are practical entries rather than games. I haven't been impressed with anything I've seen in that regard in quite some time.

By Firefly on Tuesday, May 23, 2023 - 09:27

From reading the blog post, it says that you can now launch Be My Eyes from the GoodMapsExplore application. I am only seeing an option to launch Aira from it. I’ve tried going into the settings and the different areas. Can anyone tell me what I might be missing? Is this not yet an implemented feature?

By wiljames on Tuesday, May 23, 2023 - 09:27

Are you sure you are using Explorer and not Outdoors? I see three tabs on the bottom. The one you need to double tap is Menu.