Tech Authority: The Voice Memos App

by Mark Levengood

A common struggle among visually impaired individuals is the emphasis on pictures as a means of capturing a moment or experience. Certainly we will participate in the picture and position ourselves according to instruction from the individual with the camera or smart phone, but inevitably we will never be able to enjoy those pictures. However, I inadvertently stumbled across a solution to at least some of these situations. While exploring my iPhone I discovered an app called Voice Memos. I never downloaded this app, so I can only assume it came as a standard app already installed on the iPhone at purchase. Essentially, this app is a preinstalled digital recorder on the phone. Many visually impaired people will pursue a digital recorder as a means of quickly recording appointment dates and times when at a doctor’s office or even phone numbers of people they encounter in public, both of these situations occurring away from their normal means of noting this information in a form that is accessible to them. Naturally a paper and pencil will not work, but a digital recorder suffices. The Voice Memos app will successfully accomplish this same task.

My primary use for the Voice Memos app at this time in my life actually concerns my nieces. As previously mentioned, visually impaired people cannot appreciate pictures, and there are certainly many pictures to be taken of all children, but especially when infants and toddlers in an effort to capture and preserve that stage of life. I began using my Voice Memos app in early 2017 before my nieces even turned a year old to record their cute sounds, laughter, and early attempts at words, which has since evolved into recording them say my name and that of my Seeing Eye dog as well as some of our earliest conversations and songs. Every time they do something adorable, which is frequent, I am trying to record it with my Voice Memos app to relive and experience later, either that week or in the years to come. Therefore, the Voice Memos app has offered me and other visually impaired people with a way of replacing cameras and pictures by providing an alternate means of capturing those special moments in life. A picture might be worth a thousand words, but as a visually impaired individual I can now record those thousand words to appreciate and value just as a sighted person treasures a picture.

If you are visually impaired and you have a digital recorder, then by all means use it, but if you do not have a digital recorder and do own an iPhone, then start accessing this Voice Memos app. I cannot comment on other smart phones having a Voice Memos app or something similar as I am an iPhone user, but hopefully something is available as I have recorded not only special interactions with my nieces, but also important presentations and other family events.