Hi Alison,
I have similar issues to the person youre working with,
though the other way around as to sight and hearing. The first question is
whether he wants to use braille. I assume, because you said his sight is
failing, that the answer is either no or not yet. If Im wrong in this, let
me know and Ill put forward those options which support a braille display.
Having said that, and focussing only on speech for the moment,
there are quite a few devices. As a preliminary point, stand-alone scanners
and reasonable pricing do not generally go together. The prices are very
high for what you get, I was about to say obscenely high. If he has someone
to set up a computer for him, or can do that himself with NVDA and a pair of
headphones, he can pay a comparatively tiny amount (easily under £700) and
have the computer come up talking and start the scanning application the
moment it boots. Basically, it can act like an all-in-one device without
being one. Obviously, all the speech options, from the most robotic to the
most natural, would be available. Note that most of the all-in-one devices
are around £1500.
As to audio, anything with a headphone output, whether that be stand-alone
or PC, can have an amplifier/equalizer/whatever he wants plugged into it. I
have an amplifier plugged into mine and have the audio feed sent to my FM
system which pipes it to the hearing aids. When my hearing was better, I
used to use an amplifier and equalizer, then route that to headphones.
If stand-alone is absolutely necessary, there are often
stand-alone devices available on the used market. Try, for example, these
lists:
https://uk.groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/thebargainstore
https://ca.groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/recycleit/info
Now, as to the products themselves, there are the Eyepal
products from ABIsee
Http://www.abisee.com
They have what they call the Roll as well as the Ace plus. The Ace plus has
a screen, but I am totally blind so am not sure how useful it is to anyone.
I have tried the Ace plus myself, and found it lacking in recognition of
documents which were at all odd (receipts, anything slightly faded, odd
books, and so on, Kurzweil recognised all these fine). It also had buggy
software (sometimes it would hang, sometimes it wouldnt see text when text
was obviously there, sometimes it would fail to read
). Its speech was quite
good through the headphone output. I tried it without but found the speech
difficult to hear. However, I am particularly bad at speech without
headphones, so this means little. I have not tried the roll. Despite the
good speech, I dont like the buggyness of the product and would, at the
very least, get something with a return policy. Maybe I got a bad unit, but
I am not interested in paying £1000-2000 to experience bugs, I can do that
for free.
FreedomScientific has what they call the Sara and Sara CE. The
CE has a camera, the Sara is a scanner. Im not sure whether these are
available new any longer because FS is now selling the ABISee products. They
are, however, still listed on FS site
http://www.freedomscientific.com/Products/Blindness/ScanningAndReadingSoluti
ons
The speech on these is also quite natural, but I prefer the speech on the
Eyepal products if its a question of naturalness. For volume, though, I
think I like the Sara units more. Again, though, this is a matter which can
be sorted out with amplification and equalization.
I have had no experience with the ReadEasy Move. I have also
not used the Portset reader
http://www.portset.co.uk/document-text-reader/
so cant comment on its voice. Keep in mind, though, that many
of these are on YouTube, so one can at least get a sample of the voice. This
type of sampling is going to be fairly low quality, but you can get an idea
as to naturalness anyhow.
I hope all that is of use.
Aman
Sent: December 30, 2015 5:11 AM
To: <mailto:access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [access-uk] OCR Devices
I am in touch with a man who has a significant hearing loss, although he
copes in quiet situations. As his sight is now failing, he has asked me if I
can recommend a scanner for him. It would need to be reasonably priced but
also have good quality speech output.
I am very much out of date with what is available. Has anyone any
suggestions? I sense he is looking for a piece of stand-alone kit.
Alison
