The new ‘Louie Voice Control’ app will help visually impaired people use other apps with ease

A new mobile app named ‘Louie Voice Control’ created by Pramit Bhargava is made for visually impaired people and is currently available on Play store. It enables visually impaired users to use popular apps with just voice commands. Read on to know more about ‘Louie Voice Control’.

For Gurgaon-based Pramit Bhargava, using mobile apps was a herculean task as he was visually impaired. Now 53 years old, Pramit lost vision at the age of 30 after reaction to a medicine. Over years, Pramit has been looking for ways to become independent, especially when it came to using of technology. It was Pramit’s rigorous efforts for years that led to founding of the ‘Louie Voice Control’ app that enables visually impaired users to do each and everything within popular apps with just voice commands. It has been designed keeping in mind special needs of people with visual impairment.

Journey towards creation of ‘Louie Voice Control’

In the year 1999, Pramit, who had passed out of IIM and IIT, was working with a leading company. Due to side-effects from one of the medicines that he took, Pramit started losing his vision because his Retina was affected. By the year 2012, Pramit was unable to read anything. “I had to seek help to do simple things in life, especially using technology. It was getting difficult as days passed”, recollects Pramit.

Once, while seeking help from a sighted friend to book Uber, Pramit got an idea. His friend kept asking him questions to make selections in the app. In a couple of minutes, the booking was done. “I wondered how empowering it would be for visually impaired people if the phone features were to be read out”, says Pramit who has been working on the app for the past three years. He says that ‘Louie Voice Control’ is quite complicated to develop and needed lot of technical expertise.

‘Louie Voice Control’ app for visually impaired

The name Louie was taken from Louis Braille, inventor of the Braille.

Louie supports Uber, WhatsApp, YouTube, Contacts, phone calls and even text messages. Pramit claims that Louie is the only app that does a two-way continuous interaction with a user while letting the user voice control each and every feature of the app.

This accessibility app is not limited to visually impaired people and can be used by anyone including elderly, but will need accessibility permissions to operate.

‘Louie Voice Control’ which is currently in beta stage is free to be installed, but only in Playstore and not iOS. “My aim is to spread the word so that more and more people will start using the app and benefit from it”, says Pramit adding, “Louie is a dependable friend that you are looking for. We have come a long way”.

Since ‘Louie Voice Control’ was launched only a few days back, Pramit and his team are working on spreading the word. But those who have used it are giving good feedbacks.

Simran Chawla who is visually impaired has used the app and is also a key member of the marketing team. She says, “I drive the user experience of ‘Louie Voice Control’ app. That means, I design what the user would experience. I have been with ‘Louie’ since past one and half years. We go with the user feedback and are analyzing what they have to say. We want to make sure that the app is as user friendly as possible for visually impaired people”.

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