Identifying Money with Seeing AI and Android TalkBack

[Ricky] Today we're gonna check out how to use an app, along with the camera on our phone, to identify bills. No, not the annoying kind. Today, we're talking money. With this app, we can avoid that embarrassing and sometimes costly mistake of handing over what should have been a $5 bill, but turns out to be a 20 instead.

Yeah, this app is really cool. We're using TalkBack in this workshop so that we can do everything on our phone without looking at the screen. If you'd rather do things on your Android device without TalkBack, check out our series on using Seeing AI with Low Vision. And if you're using Apple, we have a couple series just for you as well. Now, if you're checking out these workshops and you've not used TalkBack much before, it may help to get a little more familiar with it before you dive into this series. And hey, we've got you covered with a great group of workshops on learning everything you need to know to get up to speed with TalkBack. We're gonna jump right in and start reading some money, but if you haven't had a chance to explore the app a little bit and get familiar with it, we do that very thing in our workshop on exploring the app.

So yeah, go ahead and check out that one first if you haven't already. Alright, so let's read some money. We've got seeing AI open on our phone here and we need to make sure we're in the right place in the app before we move forward. The currency channel is where we wanna be and it's under the more tab. Now we can always get there by starting at the top of the screen and swiping right until we find it. But here's a little trick for getting there a bit faster. The more tab is in the bottom right of the screen. So we'll touch the bottom right corner and then we'll slide up a bit

- [TalkBack] More. Tab three of three, enlist three items.

- [Ricky] Okay, and we'll double tap to select

- [TalkBack] Channels. One of five, enlist five items.

- [Ricky] Alright, we're almost there. We'll find our currency channel just by swiping right a couple of times. So here we go. Swiping right until we hear currency.

- [TalkBack] Product channel person, channel two of five. Currency, channel three of five.

- [Ricky] Yep, there it is. And we'll double-tap here to select it.

- [TalkBack] Selected currency channel.

- [Ricky] Okay, awesome. Now let's get to the fun part, which is identifying some money. All we need to do is point the camera at the bill, whether the bill is held up in front of us or placed down flat and seeing AI will do the rest. So here's a bill, no idea what it is or whether we're looking at the front or back. Dunno if it's upside down. And actually none of that matters to seeing AI anyway, so we're just gonna set our bill on the table here and now we'll hold the phone in portrait mode where the charging port is facing toward us and the camera is facing down. And now we'll just lift the phone up positioned over the bill and we don't even have to be too careful about where the camera is in relation to the money. As soon as seeing AI gets a glimpse

- [TalkBack] $10.

- [Ricky] Yeah, it speaks the denomination of our bill. It's so awesome that we don't have to take a lot of time to get the phone positioned just right because so often when we're using cash, there isn't time to fiddle around with anything. So as we're still holding our phone above the table here, let's move this bill out of the way. Put another one down on the table and-

- [TalkBack] $1.

- [Ricky] Yep, it got that one too, right away. Hey, we could do this all day, or at least until the money runs out. And when you want some tips for folding and identifying your money quickly by touch once you've used Seeing AI to figure out what each bill in your wallet is, check out our resources below this workshop for some ideas on how to do that. In the meantime, have fun practicing. And the next time the cashier gives you money back, you'll be able to identify it quickly and accurately right from your phone.

I'm Ricky Enger, and I'm glad you could spend a little time with me today reading money with Seeing AI. See you next time.