Best Magnifying App for iPad?

[ERD50]

My MIL's vision is very limited, but she can read very large print on her iPad.

I looked into magnifying apps for her a while back, using DW's iPad. The camera and auto-focus really work fantastic - you can get extremely sharp magnification of printed material, from close up to distant. The apps I tried had a 'freeze' mode, which was handy - like if you want a printed phone number, get it in the screen, freeze it, and then you can walk the iPad over to the phone, w/o needing to keep the iPad and paper all set up.

The thing I'm less thrilled about - the developers simply have not considered that many of their users have limited vision, and they don't make the controls as large and easy to use as they could be. Sometimes they are scrunched close together. And for some, once you freeze the image, they might allow zoom, but not pan and zoom, so the edges of the image go off-screen.

In short, amazing for what they do, but in other ways, close but no cigar.

Anyone have any other programs they know of that are better? I kinda hate to pay $ just to try each one, and it seems trying is the only way to find out these details, unless they offer a free 'lite' version.

So far, I've tried eMagnifier, Magnificent, and Mag Light. Actually, just using the built in Camera app isn't bad, but freezing is a little awkward (take a picture, load and view in the viewing app).

I would make a stand with a light for her, that should make it easy to move the paper under the iPad to scan around as you read.

-ERD50

 

[Chuckanut]

Maybe there is something here:

Technology Resources for People with Vision Loss - American Foundation for the Blind

 

[ERD50]

Thanks. I've looked through a few of these sorts of resources, and they still seem to be stuck in the expensive camera, monitor, proprietary hardware for several thousand $.

These iPad apps are so close - just a little tweaking of the interface would improve them for the low-vision community at near zero $ (and they could charge a modest fee, and I'd gladly pay if I saw good reviews or was able to make a trial run, or even see a really good demo). If I was fluent in programming these modern devices, I'd do it myself.

-ERD50