[access-uk] Re: OCR

  • From: "Barry Hill" <barry.hill3@xxxxxxx>
  • To: <access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2015 09:09:15 -0000

Thanks, Aman.  This concurs with my own feelings, but it's always nice to
get conformation from another source.  We're going to be fundraising for
£750 to buy Kerzweil 1000 and a flatbed scanner.

Cheers

Barry


-----Original Message-----
From: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
Aman Singer
Sent: Sunday, February 22, 2015 8:45 PM
To: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [access-uk] Re: OCR

Hi Barry,

At the moment, Kurzweil 1000 is undoubtedly the best package available
for both blind and partially sighted users of differing skill levels.
It uses the ABBYY FineReader recognition engine, which is the
gold-standard. If you were buying it for sighted users, or for blind
people who loved screen readers, I would go for ABBYY's own latest
version as being better at strictly the recognition task and costing
less, but for different users, Kurzweil allows use for the simplest
things through the keypad and the most complicated recognition through
menus. It's also filled with Keyboard shortcuts.
I am saddened, and honestly a bit shocked, to say that the stand-alone
machines are actually worse than the computer-based solutions. I have
tried many of them and seen text from the ones I haven't tried. I
expected better results but got worse.
Obviously, a scanner is going to give you better results than a
camera. If I were to disregard costs, I would get one of the faster
flatbed scanners and a document camera like the HoverCam or Sceye.
Both work with Kurzweil.
HTH.
Aman

On 2/22/15, Barry Hill <barry.hill3@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hi all
>
>
>
> Apologies for cross posting.
>
>
>
> Disregarding the cost, which system would people recommend for general OCR
> text to speech for letters and books?  Would a dedicated stand-alone
system
> be better than a flatbed scanner and OCR software, for example?  This is
> going to be for a blind society drop-in centre used by both blind and
> partially sighted people.  We have a dedicated PC.
>
>
>
> Cheers
>
>
>
> Barry
>
>
>
>
>
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