Cupertino High School senior Sanket Dange is developing an app to help the visually impaired recognize objects and read text. When you point a smartphone or tablet camera at an object, the Pigen app can speak the object’s name or read aloud the text in a sign.
Dange also wants to add the abilities to count currency and read documents, labels and barcodes. Since the app’s audio is in English, Dange says it also might help someone learn the language.
He was inspired to create the app after learning that his cousin in India, had made a version of Scrabble using Braille to help people with vision problems play the game. At the time, the Cupertino student was interning at a company called Baarb, which was doing work in artificial intelligence and image analysis, and that’s when he had the app idea.