We are pleased to announce that voting for the AppleVis Golden Apple Awards of 2023 is now open.
Launched in 2012, the AppleVis Golden Apples is an opportunity for blind and low vision users of Apple products to recognize and acknowledge the hard work and dedication which developers have put into making and maintaining great and accessible applications during the given year.
Past winners of a Golden Apple include Backpack Studio, Blackbox – brain puzzles, BlindSquare, Evidence 111, Microsoft Soundscape, Papa Sangre II, Swordy Quest, and Voice Dream Reader. You can view the full list of previous Golden Apple winners here.
The 2023 AppleVis Golden Apples consist of awards for Best App and Best Game. To be eligible for consideration, an app must satisfy the following criteria:
- Be fully accessible to blind and low vision users;
- Have been launched or significantly updated during 2023;
- Be from a developer with a demonstrable commitment to accessibility; and
- Be best-in-class in terms of design, functionality, and operation.
The Nominees
Below are the nominees for each award:
Best App
Be My Eyes
Be My Eyes is a free app that connects blind and low vision users with sighted volunteers around the world via live video chat. Users can request help with daily tasks like reading labels, matching clothes, using appliances, reading screens, and more. The app also includes an AI image description tool called "Be My AI" to provide visual assistance, as well as options to connect with company reps for accessible customer support. With over 7 million volunteers speaking 185 languages, help is available any time of day in 150+ countries. Be My Eyes aims to foster independence and inclusion for the blind and low vision community.
Download Be My Eyes from the App Store
BookPlayer
BookPlayer is an audiobook player that makes it easy to import, organize, and listen to audiobooks on your iOS device. Key features include AirDrop support, drag and drop library management, playlists, chapter navigation, variable playback speeds, sleep timer, and synced playback across devices. BookPlayer supports common audiobook file formats and includes accessibility features like VoiceOver support.
Download BookPlayer from the App Store
Bookshare Reader
Bookshare Reader gives members access to an extensive library of ebooks in audio and braille formats. Readers can customize their experience by adjusting playback speed, text size and color, and navigation. Downloaded books can be accessed offline, with the ability to pick up where you left off. Bookshare Reader supports those with print disabilities like dyslexia, blindness and physical disabilities.
Download Bookshare Reader from the App Store
Dystopia for Reddit
Dystopia is a fully accessible Reddit client with features tailored for both new and power users. It offers easy navigation, real-time chat, media viewing, notifications, posting, and more. Dystopia supports vision, hearing, mobility, and cognitive disabilities with options like variable font sizes, VoiceOver, braille support, switch control, and keyboard commands. The app aims to make Reddit convenient for all.
Download Dystopia for Reddit from the App Store
Envision AI
Envision is an award-winning AI-powered app that acts as the eyes for the blind and visually impaired. Using optical character recognition and other assistive technologies, Envision can instantly read text out loud in over 60 languages, describe visual scenes, detect colors, identify products by scanning barcodes, recognize people's faces, and more. Developed with and for the blind community, Envision enables users to quickly and easily access visual information to live more independently.
Download Envision AI from the App Store
Mona for Mastodon
Mona is a fully customizable Mastodon client optimized for VoiceOver and accessibility. Key features include iCloud sync, customizable actions, user notes, game controller support, tab bars, theme editing, font choices, and multiple account support. Mona Pro unlocks additional capabilities like post drafting, filtering, exporting settings, and configurable push notifications.
Download Mona for Mastodon from the App Store
OKO - AI copilot for the blind
OKO acts as an AI-powered assistant to help blind users navigate their surroundings. The app provides real-time feedback through camera, haptics, and audio to identify objects like crosswalk signals. Developed alongside the blind/low vision community, OKO focuses on privacy-by-design with on-device processing. Users can optionally share data to improve detections. The app aims to increase independence and mobility.
Download OKO - AI copilot for the blind from the App Store
Please Don't Rain
Please Don't Rain makes tracking upcoming weather easy by letting users designate an important date and location to automatically receive precipitation forecasts. The app displays beautiful weather imagery that updates along with conditions. Please Don't Rain Pro unlocks real-time forecast updates, temperature and UV charts, statistics, widgets, themes, maps integration, and custom icons. The accessibility-focused app also comes in a free ad-free version with hourly precipitation charts.
Download Please Don't Rain from the App Store
Seeing AI
Seeing AI is a free mobile app that narrates the visual world through phone camera technology to empower blind and low vision users. Key features leverage AI to read documents, identify currency, products, colors, people’s age/gender, handwriting, and surroundings in real-time. Additional accessibility tools include audio navigation, photo description, brightness detection, and third-party app integration.
Download Seeing AI from the App Store
VoiceVista
VoiceVista helps blind and low vision users build awareness of their surroundings through audio cues tied to location. Originally based on Microsoft's discontinued Soundscape project, the app aims to heighten environmental perception and support navigation for greater mobility and independence.
Download VoiceVista from the App Store
Weather Gods
Weather Gods brings forecasts to life through visuals representing fire, ice, water, air, and the moon. The app provides immersive, animated weather reports for over one million global locations. Users can set up advanced alerts and access detailed current conditions and forecasts. Weather Gods Premium offers real-time severe weather notifications, interactive widgets, Apple Watch integration, extended range forecasts, precipitation tracking, and more.
Download Weather Gods from the App Store
Best Game
Brave Brain: Trivia Quiz Game
Brave Brain is a travel-themed trivia game with over 10,000 questions across a wide range of topics. Players "journey" to different locations on a world map and answer timed quizzes to earn coins and climb the leaderboards. The accessible, ad-free game has VoiceOver support and can be played without sight or hearing. In-app purchases unlock avatars, currency, and other bonuses.
Download Brave Brain: Trivia Quiz Game from the App Store
BROK the InvestiGator
BROK the InvestiGator is a story-driven action/puzzle game for Mac set in a futuristic world where animals have replaced humans. Players take on the role of Brok, a private detective and former boxer seeking to uncover the truth behind his wife’s death. Gameplay blends investigation elements like clues and dialog with action sequences and puzzles. The neo-noir animal world explores themes of corruption and destiny.
Visit the BROK the InvestiGator website
FruitPot 2
FruitPot 2 is the sequel to the hit fruit machine slot game FruitPot. Set in the 1980s, FruitPot 2 features new stores and over 15 mini-games with original gameplay where players earn Bucks to spend at in-game mall shops. With great graphics and sounds, the innovative ever-changing fruit machine slot and accessibility features like VoiceOver support, FruitPot 2 takes the best parts of the original and gives players a fresh new way to enjoy this classic casino-style game.
Download FruitPot 2 from the App Store
Purple Friday
Purple Friday is an immersive mobile audio adventure game optimized for blind and vision impaired gamers. Players use swipe gestures to explore environments and interact with characters brought to life by a professional voice cast. The game utilizes binaural 3D audio with over 700 sound assets for a deeply vivid and spatial auditory experience across mysterious, thrilling scenes. Intuitive accessibility puts users right in the heart of the action.
Download Purple Friday from the App Store
Six Ages 2: Lights Going Out
Six Ages 2 is a standalone interactive fiction meets turn-based strategy game focused on managing a clan's relationships and resources after the collapse of civilization. With over 600 story outcomes, players make difficult leadership decisions that echo through generations with no obviously right or wrong answers. The deep simulation and bronze age mythological setting create a unique survival challenge. The game has full accessibility support including VoiceOver.
Download Six Ages 2: Lights Going Out from the App Store
SoundEcho
SoundEcho is an accessible memory game for blind and low vision players that is fully playable via VoiceOver. Users click buttons on the screen to reveal sounds - matching two buttons with the same sound makes them disappear. With animal and computer sound options plus 10, 15 or 20 sounds to match, the game challenges memory and efficiency with fewer clicks. SoundEcho supports multiplayer Game Center features like leaderboards, achievements and real-time competitive play.
Download SoundEcho from the App Store
Space Wave Race
Space Wave Race is an intergalactic spaceship racing game where players compete to become the champion pilot of the galaxy. Players fly through solar systems, space ruins, asteroids, and stars while overcoming enemies and obstacles. The game features multiple spaceships to unlock and several gameplay modes including a championship mode, single race, and endless galactic mode. Space Wave Race is designed to be fully accessible with options for reduced mobility, visual/hearing impairment, and dyslexia support.
Download Space Wave Race from the App Store
Study with Subwords
Study with Subwords turns memorization into a word puzzle game. Users create custom study lists or choose from dozens of premade lists to practice topics like language vocabulary. Words are split into pieces that must be reassembled across multiple study modes designed to aid recall. The app features full accessibility support for vision, reading and learning disabilities. Additional capabilities include a study planner, list importing, widgets, iCloud sync and Shared with You.
Download Study with Subwords from the App Store
Timecrest
Timecrest is an interactive fantasy novel where players become the protagonist who is contacted by a young mage named Ash. Ash's world of Alyncia faces destruction and players have the time magic ability to help save it. As the story unfolds, choices shape relationships and unlock one of many endings across a narrative spanning over 640,000 words. The game also features an emotional, cinematic soundtrack. Timecrest aims to provide a deeply immersive adventure through rich characters, high stakes and meaningful decisions.
Download Timecrest from the App Store
Zanagrams
This unique word game challenges players to solve six clue-based anagrams per puzzle, with the letters jumbled across the screen buttons. Users tap letters to spell out the answers, which disables those buttons to narrow choices down to the remaining letters. The game features over 20 free puzzles with 120 anagrams, hints to reveal parts of words, accessibility support for vision impairments, competitive scoring modes, friend leaderboards, and additional themed puzzle packs available for purchase.
Download Zanagrams from the App Store
Is Your Personal Golden Apple Not Shortlisted?
This year we are again offering the option to select “Other” when casting your vote. When you do this, you will be presented with a text field to enter an app or game you believe deserves special recognition. We simply ask that you first please verify it meets the Golden Apple eligibility criteria.
If a write-in receives more votes than any nominee, it will become our Golden Apple of 2023.
Contest Rules and How to Cast Your Vote
AppleVis relies on the genuine votes of blind and low vision users to choose the Golden Apples. We ask that if you are not a blind or low vision user, or if you are employed by one of the developers whose apps are shortlisted, that you please not vote in the AppleVis Golden Apple Awards. Winning a Golden Apple is a tremendous honor, and we appreciate everyone following these rules to ensure that the voting is both fare and representative of the wishes of blind and low vision users.
Voting will close at 10:00 (PST) on December 10, 2023. Voting in the AppleVis Golden Apples is open to all blind and low vision members of our community who are not employed by any of the developers whose apps are shortlisted. One vote per person.
To vote in the AppleVis Golden Apples of 2023, you will need to be logged in to the AppleVis website; if you do not already have an account, you can create an account now, then come back to this page to cast your votes. The voting form is at the end of this post, but it will only be displayed to logged in users.
We would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the developers of the shortlisted apps, and to thank you one and all for your commitment to accessibility. We look forward to discovering which apps will be chosen as our community's Golden Apples of 2023.