Seeing AI issue

By Tom Paterson, 31 January, 2024

Forum
iOS and iPadOS
Good afternoon, I have a student who has downloaded the latest version of Seeing AI, the mobile phone is an Apple SE and this issue has been ongoing since November of last year, the iphone has been updated regularly. The app is fine and it works fine if Voice Over is turned off. As Apple are constantly updating security, I had suggested waiting until the latest updates had been implemented, 17.1 had just been introduced at that time. We have downloaded the app from the official App Store. The problem is that when Voice Over is turned on, the ‘channel bar’ does not become active ie the buttons cannot be selected, there is no white line around the channel bar as it does on other iphones/ipads, when the screen is tapped, it, the screen, has a white line around it, scrolling a finger around the screen produce differing characters being read out. They do not make sense, as in sentences, they are random characters. When Voice Over is not use, Seeing AI app channels are accessible and the app works as it should. All of the students in the class use iphones and some have ipads as well, but none of these have this issue, only this one device. Can you give any suggestion as to how we can fix this issue please. Thank you for any assistance Tom

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Comments

By Malcolm13 on Wednesday, January 31, 2024 - 16:08

Make sure Screen Recognition is turned off, I’ve seen this mess up apps before!

By Brian on Wednesday, January 31, 2024 - 16:20

Hi Tom,

I may have a solution for you, as I am kind of able to reproduce this issue on my own iPhone SE2, or SE 2020 if you will. Below I will offer you some steps to try and resolve.

What I 'believe' is happening, is that your student may have inadvertently enabled a feature called "Screen Recognition". This feature is nice, when it works. What it does is allow for an app or website that is normally not accessible to the visually impaired, to be accessible.

The problem is when you use it on a natively accessible app, chaos ensues.

There are 2 headings below, each with a list of steps to fix the situation. Hope this helps your student out.

Using the Rotor

  1. Open the Seeing AI app.
  2. While VoiceOver is enabled, place 2 fingers on the screen, and rotate them clockwise or counter clockwise, like an old radio dial.
  3. You should eventually find the item labeled "Screen Recognition".
  4. Swipe up or down with 1 finger to enable/disable. You of course want it off.

If you cannot find Screen Recognition using the rotor then follow the steps for an alternative means of disabling it with Seeing AI.

Using Settings

  1. Open Settings, then Accessibility. Tap on VoiceOver.
  2. Tap on VoiceOver Recognition.
  3. Tap on Screen Recognition, Then 'Apply to Apps'
  4. Make sure Seeing AI is (not) selected.
  5. Back out of VoiceOver settings entirely, and then open/re-open Seeing AI.

If all went as intended, Seeing AI should work well with VoiceOver.

Best of luck. 😃

By Tom Paterson on Wednesday, January 31, 2024 - 16:30

Thank you both Malcolm 13 and Brian, I will try this in class tomorrow and let you know the result
Tom

By Tom Paterson on Friday, February 2, 2024 - 10:42

Has now been solved thanks to the information received, lesson learned as well, thank you, the help is very much appreciated
Tom

By Brian on Friday, February 2, 2024 - 14:56

Glad it worked out. 😎

By Neil on Tuesday, August 19, 2025 - 20:13

Recently seeing AI has stopped reading Text as soon as app is open. A picture must be taken in order to get it to read as it used to.

With documentation detection on, seeing AI app no longer verbally provides camera placement.

Seeing AI app also does not describe photos when exploring on app any longer.

I have insured that screen identification is off. I have deleted seeing AI app and reinstalled. Has anyone seen anything like this? Is there a fix?

By Martin Roberts on Wednesday, August 20, 2025 - 04:23

Good morning, I’m afraid I can’t help give you a solution here but on my iPhone 13 mini I’ve seen this exact same behaviour for the last four or five weeks and it is really frustrating me. To the point where I’m thinking about blitzing my phone and starting again unless anyone else can give any advice.

My iPhone 16 for work is fine

I have also reinstalled the application with no improvement.

By Lionel on Friday, August 22, 2025 - 09:35

I installed the last SeeingAI version (5.6) on my new iPhone 16e with iOS 18.6.2 version: it is impossible to take a picture for getting a full page reading. Error message 'a problem occured, please try again' appears.
I installed the App on alternative iPhone and meet the same issue.
Is there a global issue on this configuraiton?

By Tom Paterson on Friday, August 22, 2025 - 10:31

Since the last update of Seeing AI, there has been "Document Detection" button been added to the bottom left hand side of the screen, it is located above the READ command. This has two states, i.e. off and on. if document detection is on, Seeing AI will not read the document , if document detection is off, Seeing AI will read all text. I think this is why you must take a picture of text, the phone is may be set to "Document Detection" is on. For the purpose of this issue, I am using the iPhone 16, with Voice Over switched off