A question so often asked by people with sight problems is 'What's that?' 
followed closely by 'Where is it?'

up to recently the only way to find out was to find someone who could describe
the item or environment to the person but now there are several apps  and 
devices available that will help with this task.

In this document I'll mention just the smart phone and tablet apps and not
any specific hardware solutions.

The apps have generally fallen into two types, the first being where 
the user takes a picture which is then sent to a third party who types a 
description for them - useful but does not allow for privacy.  The second kind 
uses computer based facilities to do the same task, known as artificial 
inteligence these systems are getting better by the day and produce very fast 
answers.

In the following section I will try and list as many of these apps as possible
that I have actually tried and make brief comments.

When identifying food products it makes the job that much quicker if you can
present the right side of the product to your phones camera, for example with
many tinned products try to find the join in the can label and put that 
furthest from the camera - any other tips welcome!

A note of caution here too, these apps do seem to eat power so do try these at 
home first to avoid getting caught out with a flat battery.

These apps are also a good reason to keep your phone up to date, consider the
quality of the camera on your phone.

All these apps can be found in the google play store unless otherwise stated.
Some may be available for Apple devices as well.
Descriptions are brief at the moment - further notes will be added as I go.

I'm currently testing on Samsung galaxy S21 and S23 Ultra running Android 14.

Part of the Bixby assistant within Android on Samsung devices - it's off
the starting blocks but not tested much by me yet.

Version 3.?

No recent testing but well worth looking at. Ongoing research February 
2024.

Identifies various items and points the user to further imformation about an
item such as web sites.

Brilliant tool from Google which can be used to describe your environment, 
read text and identify food products via their packaging, a real must for all
blind Android smart device users.

Recent releases of Lookout and Talkback have made vast improvments to speed 
and accuracy.

Panning the camera round my office picked out a packet of batteries on my desk which
I had forgotten were there, the fire blanket on the wall, various items on
the shelves from books to a resin owl all within a few seconds.

A quick scan of my lounge even read the label on a candle that was on a coffee 
table.  A similar scan of the hall spotted the stairs, doors etc.

Text recognition is pretty good although maybe not as good as a specific OCR
app, sanning text with lookout gives you enough detail that you can decide if
it's junk or something worth reading properly, even has a stab at hand writing.

Overal very impressive and a must for all blind Android users I'd say.

Available on Android since December 2023 a very similar product to Googles
Lookout - well worth having both - more research ongoing February 2024.

Was known as Viaopta hello .. Can't seem to get this to work.

Provides object identification and text scanning facilities.

I suspect designed mainly for apple devices but this is another very good 
product well worth trying.

Not personally tested these but have heard good reports.

Produced by Microsoft this app will attempt to read text and descvribe objects.