Prizmo - App of the Month April 2012

Our App of the Month for April is Prizmo. Prizmo is a scanning and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) app that has specific features for text documents, bills and receipts and business cards.

Where to get it

• Download Prizmo from the iTunes App Store
• Developed by: Creaceed
• Platform: iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch (requires iOS 3.1 or later)
• Price: £6.99

What's so great about Prizmo?

Prizmo is great for scanning and performing OCR on text documents. It works best with printed material. As with most OCR apps, handwriting recognition can be problematic but Prizmo is great for when a letter pops through your door or you need to read a text document whilst out and about.

What really sets Prizmo apart from the crowd though are the additional features it offers:

• Scan bills and receipts and get Prizmo to help you with working out how to split the cost if you're out with friends.
• Scan business cards and have the information automatically added to a new or existing contact, e.g. names, phone numbers and email addresses.
• Upload your scanned documents directly to popular services such as Dropbox and Evernote.
• Translate documents using Microsoft Translate. Great if you're on holiday abroad!

User Comment

We heard from Lynn Holdsworth who's been using Prizmo on her iPhone 4.

Positioning the camera takes a bit of getting used to and there are too many steps involved in turning a picture into text that can be read with VoiceOver, but when you do get it to work the results are spectacularly good, almost 100% accurate. I tried several times but couldn't get it to read a John Lewis voucher, because the colour contrast wasn't good enough. I've used it to read a Wetherspoons pub menu and some pages from a Slimming World book though.

Got a suggestion?

We want to hear from you, our users. Which apps and websites should we be writing about on the TechKnowMore blog? Is there an app you can no longer live without? What website is at the top of your favourites list? Drop us an email on DigitalAccess@rnib.org.uk to let us know, and your favourite service could be featured in the very near future!