Accessibility Tools



  App Toolkits

Lookout - Assisted vision

Lookout uses computer vision to assist people with low vision or blindness get things done faster and more easily. Using your phone’s camera, Lookout makes it easier to get more information about the world around you and do daily tasks more efficiently like sorting mail, putting away groceries, and more.

Lookout is developed by Google and built with guidance from the blind and low-vision community.

Lookout has five modes for a variety of activities:

  • Use Food Labels mode (beta) to quickly identify packaged foods by their label, in addition to scanning barcodes. Available in more than 20 countries.
  • Read a whole page of text with Documents mode, now with support for handwriting. Take a photo of a document, and Lookout will scan the text, so that it can be read aloud by your screen reader or magnified on your phone.
  • Use Text mode to quickly scan text and hear it read aloud.
  • Use Currency mode to identify banknotes quickly and reliably, with support for US Dollars, Euros, and Indian Rupees.
  • Explore mode (beta) offers information about objects in your surroundings.

This app is only available for Android, but Microsoft has developed a similar app for iOS called Seeing AI. Open the Seeing AI toolkit.

Languages available: Bengali, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Filipino, Finnish, French, German, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Marathi, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Romanian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, and Vietnamese.

How do you use this tool?


Lookout: An assistive app for users with vision impairments, now available on more devices

Lookout for Google Lookout!
  • Install the ‘Lookout - Assisted vision’ app
  • A notification will ask you to allow permission to use your camera.
  • You can select between the 5 different modes by tapping the icons along the bottom of the screen or swiping the screen left and right
  • Explore mode will automatically scan the scene in your camera view, capture objects in the scene, and describe them.
  • A database of food labels and associated barcodes can be downloaded for 20 countries. Tap the country at the top of the screen, select the country, and download the database. You can now hold a product in front of the camera to have the app tell you the name of the product.
  • Text will instantly recognise and read aloud any text in view.
  • Document mode will allow a whole document to be scanned and the plain text displayed on screen. Your device’s screen reader can then read aloud the text. The app will help you to position your camera so the whole document can be viewed.
  • In currency mode the app will read aloud the value of any note. You can select between Euros, US Dollars or Indian Rupees, with more currencies to be added soon.

Detailed instructions: https://support.google.com/accessibility/android/answer/9031274