So now that Fleksy has been released for a few weeks now, I would like to look at the app, and see if it measures up to the hype that surrounded it at #NFB12? How does Fleksy work?
Fleksy is a new keyboarding app for iOS that allows blind or visually impaired users to type on any iPhone or iPod touch. Once the user loads the app, Fleksy loads the speech engine and then brings up a text box and the on scren keyboard. Once loaded, a user can then tap on the screen where they think the character they need would be, and then the the user swipes right to complete the word they just typed. Once the user swipes right the app tries to guess what word they typed and puts it on the screen. swiping down will go to the next suggestion, and swiping left will delete the word. swiping right again will add punctuation.
thoughts
So how well does it work? Fleksy has proven to be a very accurate app. I believe it has up to 90% accuracy The speech is good, and it is very responsive. Several users have said they do not like the price of the app, but for the licensing and technology needed to build this app I can see why this is needed. There are still some things I do not like though. First, I think we should have an iPad version of this. This app will work on the iPad, but the app will still need to be doubled to be used in full screen on the iPad, which lowers accuracy. I urge the makers of Fleksy to please make an iPad app. I would also like to see some saving abilities. Local and iCloud saving would be an excellent thing to add. I would love to see the load times fixed to be a bit quicker, but I do understand why this happens.
Conclusion
Fleksy is a great new app to help the blind and visually impaired type quickly. Even though this is the best audience, I do think that this app could be used in other applications. I think that if the makers wanted a more broad audience, then they would market this app as a fully eyes-free capable app for sighted users who need to keep their eyes on the road or who need to watch where they are going while walking. Even though the app has a lot of new features and is very useful, I think it would be very worth the price if it has some of the features mentioned above. Despite the price, I recommend everyone get this app and support these guys. I also would recomend any iOS developers check out their APIs for their own apps.