New apps (applications) for iOS devices are frequently released, and the following is list compiled of the apps which were most highly rated by students who are blind or visually impaired. Many of these help to support various areas of the Expanded Core Curriculum (ECC), including recreation & leisure, social interaction, independent living, and assistive technology.
Editor’s note: This is a follow-up to Academic Apps, Part 1. For other lists of apps, click here to see Linda Mamer’s other blog posts.
Apps are organized into the following categories:
Streaming
 Netflix |
Subscription service for watching TV episodes and movies on your phone. |
 Hoopla Digital |
Borrow popular movies, music, audiobooks, and television shows from your local library and play them on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. |
VoiceOver
 Voice Dream Reader |
This app reads PDF and Word documents, DRM-free EPUB and DAISY eBooks, and Web pages. Directly integrated with Bookshare, Dropbox, G-Drive, Evernote, Pocket, Instapaper, and Gutenberg. |
 TapTapSee – Blind & Visually Impaired Camera |
Using VoiceOver, users simply double tap the screen to take a photo of anything, at any angle, and hear the app speak the identification back. |
Independent Living
| TapTapSee – Blind & Visually Impaired Camera |
Using VoiceOver, users simply double tap the screen to take a photo of anything, at any angle, and hear the app speak the identification back. |
 Claro MagX – High Definition Vision Enhancement App for Zooming and Magnifying |
Turns iOS device into a powerful high definition visual magnifier. |
Please note that you may need to check whether the app has been updated or whether it only works with certain operating systems. Please let us know if you have any information to share about any of the apps on this page! (This list was last updated on January 2025; broken links were taken down, but new ones have not yet been added.)
