Touch Sight Camera for the Blind Displays Photos Using Braille
Posts with tag blind
Web App Brings the Internet to the Blind
The Internet is supposed to be the great equalizer. Race, color, creed, class, and physical handicap are supposed to of no impediment on the Web. Unfortunately, the blind face great obstacles in getting online, especially from public computers, like those in a library or Internet cafe. Screen reading software is rarely installed on these PCs, and portable options are often prohibitively expensive.
A new Web app from a graduate student at the University of Washington aims to help break down these barriers by bringing screen reading technology to any Web-connected computer. If the user can navigate, or have someone navigate, to http://Webanywhere.cs.washington.edu/ they'll be able to launch an in-browser screen reader. The reader, called Web Anywhere, will work on any computer with any modern Web browser, such as Firefox or Internet Explorer 7.
The reader is still in early development and needs some tweaking, but it looks to be a potentially revolutionary tool for the blind. You can check out the video above for a demonstration of how the Web app works. It's nice to see someone using the powerful tools made available via the Web to build something that does more than let you share photos and 'poke' friends. [Source: Yahoo! News]
This Cell Phone Reads to the Blind
The 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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