Voice Actions app

By Unregistered User (not verified), 19 September, 2011

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

Hi all,

I recently stumbled upon an app called Voice Actions (App Store link).

This app enables you to control your iDevice with spoken commands. According to the app description you can use these commands to do the following:

  • Send email and text messages
  • Search by voice
  • Listen to music
  • Set alarms and reminders
  • Voicedial your contacts
  • Ask any question
  • Get instant translations
  • Search news, images, videos, and places

This all sounds very interesting, and potentially very useful.

A couple of negatives are a $10 price tag and an apparent preference for US accents (some reviews in the UK App Store say the app struggles to recognize commands).

Apparently you press the screen once when starting the app to issue a command, and there are some scenarios where lists are shown.

I've asked the developer about VoiceOver support, but unfortunately their response was a little vague as to whether it was fully accessible at the moment. They did say, however, that there are a number of vision-impaired users of the Android version of the app.

The developer did say that the app could be made even more useful to blind users with just a few changes, and that they will add a 'voice only' option in the preferences in the next release which will optimize the workflow in cases where you can't see the display.

This sounds very encouraging.

Has anybody already tried the app (either on iOS or Android)

Options

Comments

By allseed on Sunday, September 25, 2011 - 18:06

Why oh why did I buy this app? I really like what it cn do and may hang on to it for a while but I'm going to request a refund unless someone wants to give me the 10 dollars it cost me to purchase it. I wouldn't mind spending my dwindling dollars on an app that works, but not on one that doesn't.

That's a real shame, as this had the potential to be a very useful app.

Hopefully the developer will make the promised improvements to VoiceOver support.