iPhone describing scenes in camera app

By Brian, 19 February, 2022

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

Using iPhone 13 pro Max, I understand you can get VoiceOver to describe what the camera is seeing? Can anyone explain how this is done?

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By Mr Potato Head on Thursday, February 24, 2022 - 19:15

I don't use the camera too often, but my own experience has been that this feature worked out of the box, in that I didn't need to toggle any settings.

What I do find, however, is that sometimes I have to touch the screen for VoiceOver to speak what's in the viewfinder.

I find that its people detection feature works quite well - telling me how many people are detected and in most cases their position in the viewfinder.

The scene description can also be very good at times, although this is where I most often have to touch the screen to trigger it.

Good luck and happy snapping ☺️

By Ishkabibble on Thursday, February 24, 2022 - 19:15

The feature that allows VoiceOver to describe contents of the camera viewfinder, as well as images from other apps and on the Internet, is called VoiceOver Recognition. It is not enabled by default and you have to download a special file from Apple before it can be used. To turn this feature on, go to Settings > Accessibility > VoiceOver > Image Descriptions. Here, you can initiate the download that enables the image descriptions and once you customize the feature to your liking, you should have automatic image descriptions in the camera roll. Be aware that these descriptions constantly refresh so if you are focused on the camera viewfinder it could get overwhelming as there might be too much information but I find the descriptions to be a lot more insightful than apps like seeing AI under certain circumstances. There is also a screen recognition feature that uses artificial intelligence to increase the accessibility of certain inaccessible apps but I haven't played with it enough to decide if it works well. Hope this helps.