Winston Chen, the developer of the iOS app, Voice Dream Reader, sits down with the team at Cool Blind Tech to tell the story of how having been inspired by a Ted Talk podcast, his departure from mainstream tech, life on an Artic island north of Norway, and how that led to the development of Voice Dream Reader. Mr. Chen describes the original intent for Voice Dream Reader, and how that later manifested into an app for educators, the blind, and dyslexic.
Mr. Chen proceeds to announce the release of a new iOS word processing application which is designed specifically with blind people in mind. The new app is called, Voice Dream Writer, and is available shortly in the App Store for $9.99.
Here’s the iTunes description.
Voice Dream Writer helps everyone write better: Text-to-speech proofreading reduces mistakes, phonetic and meaning search help you find the right words, and an active outline improves the structure of your writing.
Text-To-Speech Proofreading. Professional proofreaders recommend reading out loud as the best way to catch mistakes. Like a personal proofreader, Voice Dream Writer reads your writing using text-to-speech, so you can easily spot awkward sentences, grammatical errors and typos. Also, it can read words and sentences as you type or voice dictate. This way, you can type faster because you no longer have to look up to check the text you just wrote.
Word Finder. Voice Dream Writer helps you find the right words using phonetic search and meaning search. For example, search for “inuf” phonetically, and you will find “enough”, and search for “Fast Africa Cat” by meaning and you will find “Cheetah.” Word Finder also shows you the dictionary definition of a word as you type without you having to select anything or open another program.
Outline. As you write, Voice Dream Writer automatically creates an outline of headings, paragraphs and sentences. The Outline helps you structure your document better by giving you an always-on overview. You can also quickly navigate to a section in a long document without endless scrolling. Finally, you can drag and drop elements in the Outline to organize your writing. No more selecting, cutting and pasting large blocks of text.
Besides these unique features, Voice Dream Writer also comes with everything you would expect from any great writing tool:
