[bookshare-discuss] Fwd: Fw: Kurzweil-NFB Reader: Device provides words to live by
- From: Cindy <popularplace@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2006 12:14:48 -0700 (PDT)
This is wonderful news!! Wow!
Cindy
--- Louise <bookscanner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> From: "Louise" <bookscanner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: "Louise Gourdoux" <bookscanner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: Fw: Kurzweil-NFB Reader: Device provides
> words to live by
> Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2006 08:59:23 -0500
>
>
>
> Baltimore Sun, Maryland
> Friday, April 14, 2006
>
> Kurzweil-NFB Reader: Device provides words to live
> by
>
> By Frank D. Roylance
>
> Hand-held reader that can convert text into
> synthesized speech may increase
> independence for the visually impaired
>
> Not long ago, James Gashel was on Capitol Hill,
> waiting for a meeting to
> start, when he realized that he needed some numbers
> from a chart he was
> carrying.
>
> That was a problem. Gashel is blind, and so was his
> companion. And the chart
> was not in Braille. Gashel was reaching for his cell
> phone to call someone
> at his office to retrieve the numbers, when his
> colleague stopped him.
>
> "Why don't you try the reader?" he asked.
>
> Of course.
>
> Gashel, an executive at the National Federation for
> the Blind in Baltimore,
> was carrying the world's first hand-held reading
> machine for the blind -
> just developed by NFB in collaboration with Kurzweil
> Technologies Inc. of
> Wellesley, Mass.
>
> Combining a 5-megapixel digital camera with a
> personal digital assistant, or
> PDA, the 13-ounce Kurzweil-NFB Reader converts
> digital images of text into
> synthesized speech.
>
> Gashel pulled out his reader, snapped a picture of
> the chart, "and within a
> minute I had the numbers I wanted," he said. And he
> didn't have to bother
> anyone else to get them.
>
> Now in final field tests before its release for sale
> by Kurzweil this
> summer, the device was officially unveiled last week
> at ceremonies at NFB
> headquarters in South Baltimore.
>
> Thanks to the new reader, Gashel and 75 other blind
> product testers across
> the country are sorting through their own mail,
> reading restaurant menus,
> identifying packages in the freezer by the labels
> and discovering many other
> tasks they can now do without assistance.
>
> It's liberating, Gashel said. "You start to think
> about your capabilities
> differently."
>
> In addition to many of the nation's 1.3 million
> blind people, he also
> predicts a demand from older people with failing
> eyesight, and young people
> with dyslexia or learning disabilities.
>
> The NFB's collaboration with Kurzweil began more
> than 30 years ago, when
> founder Ray Kurzweil, a pioneer of character
> recognition and text-to-speech
> devices, came to the federation's offices, then in
> Washington.
>
> He had developed the first Kurzweil Reading Machine.
> The size of an office
> copier, it could scan a document and read it in a
> synthetic human voice.
>
> "That was very revolutionary," Gashel said. Until
> then, blind people were
> pretty much limited to live readers, or the limited
> number of publications
> available on tape or records, or transcribed into
> Braille.
>
> The Kurzweil reader was big and expensive - $50,000
> each, Gashel said. It
> couldn't read photocopied matter and it had problems
> with pages crowded with
> pictures.
>
> But it was clearly a breakthrough. So the NFB bought
> six, and began working
> with Kurzweil to improve them. "This was the first
> time an inventor of a
> product had ever come directly to us," seeking input
> from the blind in the
> development of an "access" machine, Gashel said.
>
> Eventually, Kurzweil began to sell improved versions
> to schools, libraries
> and rehabilitation agencies. But even though prices
> fell over the years, the
> reader remained too costly for individuals.
>
> Just as importantly, "There was always a need for
> something portable,"
> Gashel said.
>
> By the mid-1990s, the advent of desktop computers
> and scanners enabled
> Kurzweil to develop a PC-based reader - the Kurzweil
> 1000.
> Character-recognition software was improving, too.
> And laptops made the
> hardware required smaller.
>
> But one problem remained: "You would have to have a
> scanner - it would be
> quite a bit of paraphernalia to carry about," Gashel
> said.
>
> Digital photography provided the needed
> breakthrough; that, and the
> miniaturization of computer power in the PDA - the
> hand-held computer that
> millions use to organize their lives.
>
> The Kurzweil-NFB Reader, which is expected to cost
> less than $3,000, marries
> a small, 5-megapixel Canon camera to an ASUS A730
> PDA. They are wired
> together and held by a vinyl case about 6 inches by
> 3 inches by 2 1/2
> inches. It's all operated with just nine buttons,
> with voice prompts from a
> small speaker or through earphones.
>
> Holding the device about 16 inches above a sheet of
> paper lying on a table,
> Gashel lines up the shot. He is guided by a sort of
> audio viewfinder:
> "Right, bottom edges are visible ... two degrees
> counterclockwise relative
> to page."
>
> The camera speaks in an oddly Eastern European male
> voice, but it's one
> that's familiar and comfortable for people who use
> electronic readers.
>
> Gashel pushes a button and the shutter clicks. A few
> seconds later, the
> device is reading the release aloud, flawlessly.
>
> Tests on a business card and an ATM receipt are
> rougher. The device misses
> some lines of type, and mistakes some characters for
> others. But it does
> better on a second try, "learning" as it goes along.
>
> Had it been his own ATM slip, Gashel said, "I would
> have known what I
> withdrew, and I'd know most of the information, even
> if it didn't hit it
> right."
>
> Many times, he said, "you're not going for perfect;
> you're going for 'What
> is this?'"
>
> Jim McCarthy, 39, director of governmental affairs
> at the federation, has
> also been testing one of the readers. A new office
> arrangement has left him
> without a nearby assistant, so something as simple
> as sorting through papers
> on his desk becomes an issue.
>
> "I'm probably 25 feet from the closest person," he
> said. It's not a big deal
> to walk around the corner and ask someone to
> identify a piece of paper, "but
> it seems like a waste of time."
>
> The reader "allows people to sort pertinent
> documents in a way a lot of us
> aren't accustomed to. That is pretty liberating," he
> said.
>
> Lou Ann Blake, 46, a visually impaired research
> specialist at the
> federation, has also been a test-driver. "I read the
> cooking directions on a
> bag of pasta," she said. "It was plastic and I kinda
> had to flatten it out.
> But it did quite well."
>
> Videotape labels, bills, letters, 401(k) statements
> - it read them all.
>
> "Some of the pronunciations it doesn't get quite
> right - legal terms, Latin
> terms," she said. But "it's amazingly easy to use. I
> have a harder time
> using the copy machine here sometimes."
>
> But the key advance is the new device's portability,
> said John Pare, 47,
> director of sponsored technical programs at the NFB,
> who started to lose his
> sight at 35. "No matter where you are, you're
> constantly being handed
> printed material," he said. "It's the way the world
> works. In restaurants,
> the airport, hotels, at a conference."
>
> The Kurzweil reader enables the blind to grab an
> image quickly, anywhere -
> even in the dark - and "read" it themselves instead
> of relying on friends or
> strangers to read the documents aloud.
>
> "It's been very gratifying," Kurzweil said. "When we
> started this project
> about four years ago, we weren't ... entirely sure
> to what extent we could
> compensate for distortion in the images that would
> occur using a hand-held
> camera."
>
> Where a scanner provides a flat, uniform image and
> perfect lighting, the
> hand-held digital camera would tilt and rotate
> relative to the page - then
> the user would move and the lighting would be
> uneven.
>
> Worse, the pages of an open book are curved, with
> portions at different
> distances from the camera.
>
> "So we developed image enhancing software that takes
> this image and modifies
> it to get rid of all those distortions," Kurzweil
> said. "And we had to fit
> all this software [along with the character
> recognition program] into this
> little computer."
>
> But it worked. "We have 75 in the field, and
> hundreds very soon," he said.
> "And the feedback from blind users is that it's
> having tremendous success."
>
> If it does well, the federation could eventually
> profit. Gashel said the NFB
> owns 40 percent of the rights to the technology. In
> the meantime, the
> software will continue to be improved so that the
> device can read more
> varied and complex material.
>
> Kurzweil also predicts a time when a blind person
> will be able to enter a
> room, snap a picture, and have the reader identify
> the types and locations
> of lamps, tables, people and other items in the
> room.
>
> Also, devices "will continue to get smaller over
> time," he said.
>
> Gashel expects the gadget will be crammed into a
> cell phone some day. But
> Kurzweil is thinking even smaller.
>
> "In five to seven years, the camera will pin on your
> lapel and take pictures
> as you walk around," describing the scene as you go,
> he said.
>
> NFB chef and teacher Marie A. Cobb, 59, of
> Catonsville, who is visually
> impaired, has been using the reader since January.
> She has her own hopes.
>
> "What I'm looking for is the day when I can take it
> into a mall and have it
> tell me the name of the stores, and the locations on
> those big directories.
> I would love that," she said.
>
>
>
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/health/bal-hs.blind14apr14,0,5280843.story?
> coll=bal-health-headlines
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> No virus found in this outgoing message.
> Checked by AVG Free Edition.
> Version: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.4.1/311 -
> Release Date: 4/13/2006
>
>
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
To unsubscribe from this list, send a blank Email to
bookshare-discuss-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Put the word 'unsubscribe' by itself in the Subject line. To get a list of
available commands, put the word 'help' by itself in the subject line.
Other related posts:
- » [bookshare-discuss] Fwd: Fw: Kurzweil-NFB Reader: Device provides words to live by
