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This Cell Phone Reads to the Blind

by Tim Stevens on January 28, 2008 at 12:32 PM

Reading Cellphone to Helps the BlindThe blind have long been criticizing our bills of various denominations thanks to their identical size, shape, and feel, which makes them impossible to tell apart for those with limited or no sight. Now, a potential solution is coming from a very common source: the camera phone in your pocket.

Computer software has long been able to identify characters or faces in pictures, meaning telling a $1 bill from a $100 bill is easy to do if you're a computer with the right programming. What hasn't been done on a large scale before is building this programming into smart phones with cameras and combining that with text-to-speech software. This enables the phone to verbalize what it's reading; a boon to those who would otherwise be unable to read the text.

The $2,100 smart-phone from the National Federation for the Blind and text-to-speech pioneer Ray Kurzweil is able to read currencies as well as just about any other printed words like menus or business directories. It's based on the Nokia N82 smart-phone, which can be used with AT&T and T-Mobile in the U.S. But, you won't be able to walk into your local AT&T store and buy one with this configuration. For a listing of retailers in the U.S. and abroad, plus some more details, head on over to the phone's page.

From AOL News

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Tags: Blind, Camera-Phone, KNBF, N82, Nokia, Smart-Phone

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