OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology is always great to have in one’s back pocket, because it allows you to easily scan and digitize documents with just your smart phone. In past articles we have looked at both PrizmoGo and Microsoft Lens, and we consider them to be among the best OCR apps available right now.

However, there is another well-established OCR app that we haven’t talked about before, and that’s going to be the subject of today’s e-bulletin.

ABBYY Fine Reader is an AI-powered scanner designed to scan and capture paper documents, books, agreements, receipts, magazine articles, notes, recipes, charts, tables, slides, whiteboards, and even billboards on the street.

I tested it on my health insurance card and the app performed a perfect capture with all the small details correctly recognized.

Once scanned, documents can be edited, marked up, and then sent via email, airplay, via cloud, printed, and more. Documents can be saved as a JPEG image file or as a PDF for further editing and sharing. From the gallery, the apps’ AI will automatically recognize and classify document types into 7 different categories, including A4, books, business cards, handwritten, IDs, other docs, and receipts.

ABBYY FineReader also has some other helpful quality of life features worth mentioning. A built-in search function allows you to search for specific text within your documents. A virtual ruler can be used to exactly gauge the size of a non-standard document. For users who download the free app for PC, the Home Sharing tool allows users to instantly transfer documents from their mobile device to their PC.

The app can also recognize and convert documents into TXT files offline, so internet connectivity is not needed for the initial scans. Online, the app can currently recognize 183 languages including French, making it a good tool for Francophone users.

The annotation tool is great for marking up documents, allowing you to write in free hand with a variety of pen and marker colors, add text boxes, signatures, and more.

ABBYY Fine Reader is available for free to try, but for unlimited functionality a subscription is required. The pro version of the app can be purchased for as little as $2.50 a month depending on the subscription model. To learn more, click here.

This post originally appeared on the AT Help Desk website.

Tags: apps, assistive technology, AT HelpDesk, Atlantic Regional Office