MONTHS ago I wrote in this column that smart phones are really not very smart because they allow people to walk along whilst texting and bump into other people in this street.

I take it all back, I was wrong. I have now discovered how useful they can be for people with visual impairment.

For six years I found it very difficult to do things like type emails and text messages.

So, for a long time I’ve not been able to get the most out of my smartphone and enjoy it in the full and complete way that most people do these days.

I had my stroke and became visually impaired but I have been very keen to try all the technologies out there to help me.

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I have tried all kinds of software for my computer that makes the print bigger, mouse pointer bigger and does all kinds of fancy things but all of them were difficult to use and used up too much of the computer’s memory resources.

So I stopped using them.

The most bizarre things I tried were a pair of glasses with little prisms attached so that everything was moved into my field of view.

They were not comfortable and gave me a headache so I quickly stopped using them.

Then a few months ago it all changed when I upgraded to the very latest smartphone on the market.

I’m absolutely blown away by the technology that it uses to help disabled people like myself to read and dictate messages.

I can now read and send emails and text messages wherever I am as well as find webpages and have them read to me.

Until last week the problem of reading printed text was still beyond me.

Then I discovered the KNFB reader mobile application for iPhone which costs about £80, (unfortunately) to download from the App Store.

This application allows your phone to photograph a document and then read it to you. Amazing and I have already read half of quite a long book that I bought recently.

It’s also a great pleasure to sit and read the letters that arrive from the postman each morning. It’s also great at reading things like restaurant menus, flyers and leaflets.

The name stands for Kursweill (the inventor) and the National Federation for the Blind (the USA equivalent of the RNIB in the UK) who collaborated to produce this app.