Take it, save it.
That alone gives the photograph words
Nothing difficult is required. Press the shutter and, from that moment, a description of the photograph is written and read aloud. The description is written into the photograph itself, so the words stay in the Photos app long after you have closed MimiSeka.
1Take it
Point the camera and press. Either the on-screen button or the iPhone's volume button. VoiceOver reads the buttons out, and taking photos keeps working with no signal.
2Listen
What is in the frame, stated briefly and factually. “A white mug, and light from the window” — you simply hear it.
3Save it, send it
The description is embedded in the photo as alternative text and saved to the Photos app. Post to X and the alt text is attached automatically. If you send the photo on its own, the words can come off along the way, depending on how you send it.
In the Photos app, after MimiSeka is closed
The embedded description becomes the “Caption” in the iPhone's own Photos app. Select the photo and VoiceOver reads that description, so you know which photo it is without opening it.
And if you type “veranda” or “teacup” into the Photos search, that photo comes up. Even when you cannot remember the day, you can find it by a word.
Making a story, or talking about one, can wait for whenever you feel like it. Even if you only take and save, MimiSeka is doing something useful.
The signals come as a voice and in your fingertips
So that you know what has just happened without watching the viewfinder. A setting turned on or off, the shutter released, the focus set — what happens on the camera screen comes back as a short sound and a vibration under your finger. The same event always has the same feel, so after a few photographs your fingers know before you do.
On the self-timer, “3, 2, 1” is counted aloud. Even when you cannot see the numbers on screen, you know the instant the shutter will go — so you can take one with yourself in it.
With VoiceOver, from beginning to end
Taking a photo, talking with it, writing a story, leafing through the bookshelf, giving one away by QR code — the reading order, the labels and the hints are built screen by screen, so that it can all be done without looking.
Just turn on VoiceOver on your iPhone. MimiSeka has no “mode for blind users”. It is built so that people who see and people who do not can do the same things on the same screen.
Even so, there will be places that are awkward to use. Tell us through the contact form and we will put them right.
The way it speaks can be changed later
“Blind” and “low vision” cover a great many different people, and the words that land are not the same for everyone. The way it speaks is chosen from how you answered the first questions, and if it does not suit you, you can pick again at any time under “colour and light” in the settings. The app is not quietly deciding what you are and leaving it at that.
So the description does not lie
For a reader who cannot check with their own eyes, the accuracy of a description is the whole of trust. A story is not handed over as the AI wrote it. It goes through a step that asks whether it is telling only what is in the picture.
The description written into the photograph does not go through that step. It is a short, factual sentence.
Do not invent sounds or smells that are not in the photograph. Do not assert what an object or a person is feeling. Words that reach someone who cannot see are accurate words for someone who can, too.
Even so, the AI does misread photographs. That is why both the description and the story can be rewritten afterwards. If it is wrong, put it into your own words.
Beyond the eyes
- ●Text size — follows your iPhone's setting. The layout is built so that controls do not fall off the screen when text grows.
- ●Contrast and dark display — high-contrast display is supported. Nothing conveys its meaning by colour alone.
- ●The pulse of the voice — the device vibrates softly along with the reading, so the breaks between sentences and the rise and fall of the voice reach your fingers. You can choose how it feels, or switch it off.
- ●The text stays visible while it reads — it does not rely on sound alone. You can read along as you listen.
- ●Background playback and the lock screen — the reading continues with the screen off, and can be controlled from the lock screen.
- ●No app needed at the other end — the pages for a photograph you listen to, behind the QR codes and links, are built to be read by a screen reader.
- ○Reduce Motion — support for the iOS “Reduce Motion” setting is still being checked screen by screen. We declare it, honestly, as not supported.
In the App Store's accessibility section we declare only what we have actually confirmed. Writing “supported” for something unverified would break the first promise this app made.
When you want to know what is in front of you (coming later)
MimiSeka Lupe Coming soon
We are preparing a companion app, Lupe. Hold up the camera, and the words and the scene in front of you turn into a voice on the spot. Timetables, price tags, post, the leaflet in a box of medicine — text is read exactly, and a long press spells it out letter by letter. The colours of the screen come from how colour vision and low vision actually work: yellow is where you touch, white is where you read.
If Scia is the app for keeping, Lupe is the app for knowing, now. We will announce the release date on this page.