Experience more with virtual seeing assistants by Transition Technologies, that support visually impaired people in their everyday lives.

Seeing Assistant Audio

Seeing Assistant Audio is an application that provides advanced capabilities of bookmarking audio files. It is very simple and intuitive to use. We plan to continue its development, so we would be very grateful for your opinions and suggestions.

Ways of use

The application can be useful any time we have longer sound recordings, in which we need to indicate its key moments: recordings of lectures at the university, podcasts, audiobooks, etc. Thanks to Seeing Assistant Audio you will be able to find fast the most important parts of your recordings. On the other hand, export option lets you share labeled files with others.

What can Seeing Assistant Audio do?

In the application, you can:

• import and export labeled audio files
• insert bookmarks with predefined priorities and with your own description
• use different sorting criteria on the list of bookmarks
• accelerate and slow down playback speed rate

First screen – a list of files

In the installation version of this application on this list there are two sound files “Seeing Assistant Home podcast” and “Seeing Assistant Move podcast”. These are presentations (in English) of other applications from the assistant’s family developed by Transition Technologies.

If you want to import your own file, then send it via e-mail to the mailbox configured on the device. Open this e-mail , find the attached audio file and using one finger do the double tap gesture and hold and then select from the list the Seeing Assistant Audio application as this, in which the file is to be opened. You can also import an audio file that you have e.g. in your Drop Box account. For this purpose tap it twice. Then select “Open with” and select from the list Seeing Assistant Audio.

Recordings already labeled with bookmarks can be also send/exported via email.

In the edit options (the “Edit” button – the top right corner of the screen), we can change the name of the recording, remove it and just send by e-mail.

In the upper left corner of the screen, we have the “Info” button, pressing it you will be switched to a screen where you will find the following buttons:

• „About the  application” – a brief description of the application along with a link to the product website and e-mail
• “Our other applications” – information about our other applications from the Seeing Assistant’s family

• “Terms of use of the application” – terms of use of Seeing Assistant Audio that are being approved before its first run
• “Settings” – for now, we can at this point chose whether the double tap on a file in the list of recordings will automatically start its playing or if you have to manually activate it  –  pressing the play button or using the two finger double tap gesture.

After double tap on the selected record from the list the application switches to the second screen.

Second screen – playing the file

Here you will find the ability to change the playback speed rate of the recording (four position button) and information about:

• the  name and the total duration of the recording
• the time that passed since the start of playback
• the current position in the recording (percentage) with the possibility of moving the slider up or down with a single finger gesture, or using the gesture tap and hold and moving to the left or right
• the time remaining to its end

Another are the standard control buttons are being used for scrolling recordings back and forth, and starting and stopping playback.

Roughly in the middle of the screen we have a big button “Predefined bookmark”. Pressing it we can select from a list of three priorities that we can assign to this bookmark and it is done. Below we have the button “Text bookmark”. When selected, we are switched to a screen where we chose a priority of this bookmark and in the edit field we type or dictate its name. When the VO focus is in the edit field, two fingers double tap gesture launches voice dictation option – this feature is available for selected languages and is offered by iOS.

At the bottom of the screen we have the “Manage Bookmarks”. Once it is selected, we will be switched to the third screen containing all our inserted bookmarks.

The third screen – the list of bookmarks

In this screen we have the ability to edit and browse inserted bookmarks. We can change their name, priority, search by name and set of criteria for sorting by time, name or priority.

Additional Information

Seeing Assistant Audio occurs also in the Lite free version. Thanks to it, before making a purchase you can be thoroughly familiar with its functions.  The Lite version allows you to insert 3 bookmarks.

Seeing Assistant Audio application does not have a built in speech synthesis. People with impaired vision should switch on in their iOS device VoiceOver or Zoom function.

All gestures for handling this application are given for enabled VoiceOver system screen reader program.

The application support gesture with two fingers “scrub” – back button action, while the actions that can be performed on the items lists, files and bookmarks, are implemented in the system rotor.

Before purchasing the full version please try the free Lite version and review the terms of use of the application.