Seeking VoiceOver feedback for PerceiveWorld Assist, an environment awareness app for blind and low-vision users

By perceiveWorldAssist, 27 June, 2026

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

Hello everyone,

I’m part of the team developing PerceiveWorld Assist, an iPhone app designed to help blind, visually impaired, and low-vision users better understand their surroundings through spoken feedback and haptic cues.

The app uses the iPhone camera to recognize parts of the surrounding environment and provide audio feedback. It can describe nearby objects, people, text, scene layout, and selected outdoor situations such as roads, crosswalks, vehicles, bicycles, and traffic-related risks. The goal is not to replace a cane, guide dog, orientation and mobility skills, or personal judgment, but to provide an additional layer of awareness in daily life.

PerceiveWorld Assist is already available on the App Store and is being improved based on real user feedback. It is free to download and includes optional in-app purchases.

App Store link:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/perceiveworld-assist/id6756039728

We would really appreciate feedback on:
1. Whether the main screen and settings are easy to navigate with VoiceOver.

2. Whether all buttons and controls are clearly labeled.

3. Whether the spoken feedback is useful, too frequent, or confusing.

4. Whether the app explains its safety limitations clearly enough.

5. Whether language, speech rate, subscription, and detection settings are easy to understand.

6. In what situations the app feels useful, distracting, or not trustworthy enough.

We are especially interested in practical feedback from people who use VoiceOver or low-vision settings in real daily situations. Honest criticism is very welcome, including accessibility issues, confusing wording, or anything that would make the app easier and safer to use.

Thank you for your time and for any feedback you are willing to share.

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Comments

By Enes Deniz on Saturday, June 27, 2026 - 15:01

  1. Several phrases/strings are mistranslated when using the app in Turkish.
  2. When I double-tap the Next button on the onboarding screen, VoiceOver gets interrupted when trying to say "Page x/y", though this may be more of a VoiceOver issue.
  3. I completed the first steps and the app is now scanning the environment and providing audio and haptic feedback but I can't navigate the screen with VoiceOver; the gestures don't do anything. VoiceOver focus finds nothing when I flick right or left with one finger, and I can only access the status bar even when I try to explore by touch.

By peter on Saturday, June 27, 2026 - 20:59

This sounds like an intriguing app that could be very useful in a real time environment.

Can one connect these with the Meta glasses so that the phone is using the glasses camera and microphone? Would be really useful if this tool can be used hands free. If the app is not yet integrated to work with the Meta glasses, is that functionality in your roadmap for the future?

--Pete

By perceiveWorldAssist on Sunday, June 28, 2026 - 17:04

Hi Pete,

Thank you very much for bringing this up. We agree that glasses-based, hands-free use could be extremely valuable, especially for real-time awareness while walking.

At the moment, PerceiveWorld Assist does not directly use the Meta glasses camera or microphone. The current version uses the phone’s own camera and microphone.

We are very interested in smart glasses as a future extension, and we will continue to follow the progress of Meta glasses and other wearable devices closely. When the timing is right, we would like to bring PerceiveWorld Assist to glasses as an additional option, so blind and low-vision users can have more tools and more flexible ways to use the app.

At the same time, we are being careful about a few practical issues. Continuous real-time recognition can be demanding for a small wearable device, especially in terms of battery life, heat, and comfort. The camera on glasses also follows the user’s head direction, and in real walking situations a blind user may turn their head to listen, orient, talk to someone, or scan the environment. This means the glasses camera may not always be pointing in the same direction as the path of travel, which can affect forward risk detection.

Cost is another important accessibility issue. We do not want users to feel that they must buy an additional expensive device before they can benefit from the app.

For this reason, our current approach is to make PerceiveWorld Assist work with the phone that many users already have. The phone can be handheld or worn on the chest with a simple lanyard or holder. A chest-mounted phone is not perfect, but it can provide a more stable forward-facing view in some walking situations, while keeping the solution lower-cost and easier to try.

That said, we see Meta glasses and other wearable cameras as a very promising direction, not something we are ignoring. We hope to support them at the right time as an optional extension, expanding the tools and usage scenarios available to blind and low-vision users.

Thank you again for the thoughtful suggestion. It is very helpful for our roadmap.

By perceiveWorldAssist on Sunday, June 28, 2026 - 17:09

Hi Enes,

Thank you very much for taking the time to test the app and write such detailed feedback. This is exactly the kind of practical VoiceOver feedback we were hoping to receive from the AppleVis community.

We are sorry about the Turkish localization issues. We will review the Turkish strings carefully and improve the mistranslated phrases. If you are willing to share one or two examples of the most confusing Turkish strings, that would help us identify the problem faster, but we will also do a full review on our side.

Regarding the onboarding issue where VoiceOver is interrupted while saying “Page x/y”, thank you for pointing this out. Even if this may be related to VoiceOver timing, we will investigate whether our page transition or announcement behavior is causing the interruption, and see how we can make it smoother.

The issue after scanning starts is especially important. VoiceOver users should never become trapped on a screen or lose access to the app controls. During environment scanning, users should still be able to access important controls such as pause/stop, settings, status information, and any safety-related actions. We will treat this as a high-priority accessibility issue and investigate why VoiceOver focus is not finding the screen content after the first steps are completed.

If possible, could you let us know your iPhone model, iOS version, and the app version you tested? That would help us reproduce the issue more accurately.

Thank you again for this very helpful report. We will use it to improve both the Turkish localization and the VoiceOver experience.

By peter on Sunday, June 28, 2026 - 17:31

Thanks for your thoughtful reply.

Agreed, real time descriptions could be an energy hog for small portable devices like phones. Perhaps having a voice command that would enable easy turning on and off of the real time recognition could help since the user might not need continuous live recognition in all cases.

Good point about people turning their heads, and nice to know that you are thinking about such situations and possible issues a user might run into. Although blind people need to be aware of where their camera is pointed, the issue of where one's attention is focused isn't unique to blind people. How many sighted people run into things while looking at their phones to text or look the other way just before tripping over a curb! Anyway, good caution for blind people relying on such feedback for navigation.

Hopefully Meta will open up their API so that such services work more seamlessly with the glasses. I've tried the OOrion app with the Meta glasses and, although their seems to be some promise there, the integration with the glasses is flakey with dropouts, video stopping, etc.

Anyway, as you say, best to get the experience working robustly on the phone before progressing to the glasses. It will be interesting to see how well Meta allows other apps to integrate with their ecosystem.

Keep up the good work.

--Pete

By David Taylor on Sunday, June 28, 2026 - 20:15

Firstly, the name of this app prevents dictation from working for finding it in the app store. It would be helpful if you did not join up different words like that, it would make it easier for many people to find. Next, You absolutely need a start and stop button on the main screen. I couldn't hear my voiccover to do things like change settings, because the app was endlessly going on. Next, in settings, it says it follows system language. However, it also needs to follow region, and preferably let us pick from any installed voice, not use a low quality voice in a non native version of English. It should also let us hear the voice speed as we change it, rather than be still reading descriptions when we're in the settings pannel. I will have to play further with this to be able to make more detailed comments, but it does seem to have potential.

By Michal Suchy on Sunday, June 28, 2026 - 21:02

Hello. I installed the app on my iPhone XS with iOS 18.7 and it has a very slow response with VoiceOver. Thanks, Michal.

By perceiveWorldAssist on Tuesday, June 30, 2026 - 06:22

Hi Enes,

Thank you for reporting this. We have fixed the Turkish localization issues and the VoiceOver navigation problem on the scanning screen in version 1.5.0.

Please update the app and try again. If anything still does not work correctly, please let us know.

Thanks again.

By perceiveWorldAssist on Tuesday, June 30, 2026 - 06:25

Hi,

Thank you very much for the detailed feedback. These points have been addressed in version 1.5.0.

In this update:
- The App Store name has been changed to “Perception Assist” to make it easier to find by dictation and search.
- A clear Start/Stop scanning button has been added to the main screen.
- When opening settings or other screens, normal continuous scanning announcements are reduced so VoiceOver is easier to hear.
- Voice selection has been improved. The app now considers the system language and region better, and you can choose from available Apple system voices.
- Voice speed preview has been added, so you can hear the selected voice speed while adjusting it.
- Siri and Shortcuts support has also been added for starting/stopping scanning and triggering recognition.

Please update to version 1.5.0 and try again. If you still notice any VoiceOver, voice, or localization issues, I would be grateful for more feedback.

Thanks again for helping improve the app.

By perceiveWorldAssist on Tuesday, June 30, 2026 - 06:28

Hi Michal,

Thank you for reporting this.

We have made performance and VoiceOver responsiveness improvements in version 1.5.0. Please update to the latest version and try again.

That said, real-time camera recognition can be demanding on older devices. For the best experience, we recommend using iPhone 11 or newer if possible.

If the app is still very slow after updating, please let us know which mode you were using and whether continuous scanning was turned on.

Thanks again.

By Enes Deniz on Tuesday, June 30, 2026 - 13:01

Hi, just downloaded the update and it appears to have fixed some mistranslations but others persist. Can you e-mail me all the strings so that I can review all of them and correct any mistranslations? Let me also suggest the following:
  1. I can find some of the voices installed on my device for the chosen language (e.g., eSpeak-NG), but not others (e.g., Piper).
  2. We should have an "Auto-Start Scan/Recognition" toggle in the settings.
  3. Switching to another app after stopping scan and then returning to Perceive Assist resumes/re-enables recognition. This shouldn't happen.
  4. We should be able to perform on-demand scans when we want rather than at fixed intervals. We should also be able to customize the interval more flexibly. Even 6 seconds drains the battery quite fast, and the device overheats.
  5. We should be able to switch between the front and back camera.
  6. We should be able to share images or videos to Perceive Assist to have them described. Can we also use it for OCR, color recognition, and light detection?
PS: I'm using an iPhone SE 2022, on which the app would just close, and an iPhone 16e, which I forgot to mention earlier.

By perceiveWorldAssist on Friday, July 3, 2026 - 17:55

Hi Enes,
Thank you very much for the detailed feedback. We are actively studying these issues and suggestions.
For the Turkish localization, we would be honored if you could help review the strings. Could you please email us at service@zutuanqu.cn, or share an email address where we can send the localization files?
About the scan interval: it is not simply a fixed 6-second automatic scan. The app uses an adaptive strategy based on the current scene. When possible hazards or higher-risk objects are detected, local detection and cloud AI analysis may work together more actively to verify the risk. When the surroundings appear calm, the app reduces heavier AI inference to save battery and reduce heat.
We are also reviewing your suggestions about auto-start scan, not resuming scanning after the user stopped it, more flexible on-demand scans and intervals, front/back camera switching, sharing images or videos to the app, OCR, color recognition, and light detection.
Regarding the crash on iPhone SE 2022: we have not yet received the crash log in App Store Connect. If it appears there, we will investigate and fix it as soon as possible.
Thank you again for testing the app and sharing such practical feedback.