Image to voice text readers for the blind

I was given a demonstration yesterday at Devon in Sight of a brilliant piece of kit. The Optelec ClearReader+, a machine that takes a photo of a text document and in seconds reads it back to you. It is acurate, easy to use and relays the text in a very clear voice.

The unit is about the size of a thin, slightly taller car battery. An arm folds out with the camera on and by placing the document parallel and at a right angle (straight on or sideways) it can read an A4 size below it. I was shown it readin a printed document and a newspaper article. With the newspaper it managed to distinguish between the headline, that spanned four columns in a larger font and the copy's separate columns, very impressive.

How it deals with text on different coloured backgrounds and different typefaces, I don;t know but what I did see was 100% acurate, the potential uses are huge.

The controls are minimal and simple and it has a number of features, such as four languages, four voices, both male and female, the ability to record and portablity, with a claimed battery life of five hours continous use.

However, coming in at just under £2,000, for personal use it price strictive but for use in the workplace, this could be the answer for a lot of people with sight loss needing to read a variety of printed work.

iPhone alternative:
A much cheaper, though not quite as accurate alternative is an app for the iPhone. At on 59p the app "Image to Speech" from GP Imports Inc Software, utilies the iPhone camera to take a snap and interpret anything in the image it believes to be text and reads it back out loud. The results are very hit and miss.  Clear, large, well lit text works best but as a staring point this is a brilliant innovation.

Maybe later updates will improve it's accuracy but currently it is only really useful for reading signage or small amounts of text.

Like many apps that could be of great use to the blind and visually impaired, the developers have missed a trick and made the interface not completely compatible with VoiceOver, so some level of vision is needed (lining up the text in the camera viewfinder is obviously another issue). But apps such as this show the potential of platforms such as the iPhone being a tremendous tool for people with sight loss.

Links:
Optelec link: "ClearReader page
Image to Speech link: "Image to Speech" at iTunes