Roadmap

Where Zacess is going

The core that does the real work is built and tested. Next is putting it in people's hands, one useful step at a time.

What comes next

The apps are not ready to install yet. This is the order things arrive in.

  1. Done

    This website and the code themes

    What Zacess is, how it works, how to follow along and our accessibility statement, plus the four contrast themes as code themes for editors and terminals.

  2. Now

    The browser version

    Open a file in your browser, read it in your profile, listen to it and export it, with no account to make. An early version is open to try now.

    What the browser version will include

  3. Later

    The apps

    Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS and Android, built on the same core, with lecture capture on your phone, the share sheet, a desktop shortcut and a browser extension.

What the browser version will include

The browser version is the next release. The core runs in your browser as WebAssembly, with pdf.js for PDFs and tesseract.js for text recognition. It will include:

  • Open your material: PDFs, images with text recognition, Word files and web pages.
  • Reading profiles: the presets, your own profiles and the contrast themes.
  • Read aloud: whole documents with the voices built into your browser and device.
  • Magnifier and zoom: through your reading profile and your browser's own zoom.
  • Export: accessible HTML, EPUB 3 and braille-ready files.
  • No account: see how Zacess handles your files.

You will be able to install it like an app. The features page marks everything that comes with it.

The five phases

Each phase is useful on its own: v0 can help real students without lecture recording, sync or AI. Every phase is tested with people who have different access needs before it ships.

  1. v0

    Make documents readable

    Built in the core today: most of v0, with the rest in the browser version or later

    • Import PDFs and images, with OCR where there is no text layer. Built in the core.
    • Confidence marking, correction and comparison with the original. Marking and correction are built; side-by-side comparison comes later.
    • Reading profiles with presets and light and dark high-contrast themes. Built in the core.
    • A reliable local library with autosave, version history, storage use, backup and restore. Built in the core.
    • Accessible HTML and EPUB 3 exports. Built in the core.
    • Word import, magnification basics and read aloud. Coming with the browser version.
    • PowerPoint import, the full set of personal audio controls and DOCX and MP3 exports. Later.

  2. v1

    Make lectures accessible

    Built in the core today: the camera, microphone and screens come later with the apps

    • Slide capture from the projector that skips repeats.
    • Audio recording that survives a crash or a flat battery.
    • Transcription and live captions.
    • Searchable transcripts, bookmarks, chapter markers and one timeline where you can jump to any sentence or slide.

  3. v2

    Make learning easier

    Built in the core today: much of v2, with the rest later

    • Built in the core: FSRS flashcards, reading goals with no streak pressure, revision paths, Anki and Notion export, whiteboard capture with every version kept, maths and engineering mode, universal capture, bilingual reading and braille-ready output.
    • Later: joined handwriting, advanced equation recognition, the browser extension, right-to-left layout in the reading view and more interface languages.

  4. v3

    Connect students and institutions

    Later: the sync rules are already built in the core

    • Sync across your devices, with an optional account to sync your library across the apps and the website. Zacess works fully without one and an account is never required.
    • Accessible collaboration with permission controls, keeping your own profile separate from the shared source.
    • Lecturer mode: a live slide feed that every student receives in their own profile.
    • Connections to Blackboard, Moodle, Canvas, OneDrive and Google Drive, one at a time.
    • University deployment and the optional paid tier.

  5. v4

    Add optional intelligence

    Later

    • Diagram descriptions, "explain simply", answers about your own lectures with their sources, outlines, quizzes and flashcards, OCR clean-up and glossaries.
    • Models on your device first, the cloud only for heavy jobs in the paid tier, always optional and labelled. See the AI rules.
    • The groundwork is in the core already: searching your own material with sources plus two helpers that use no AI model.

Follow along

News and releases are posted in Zacess Discussions on GitHub. Ideas for the roadmap are welcome there too.