I came accross this on another list I am on and thought someone might be interested.
Pauline----- Original Message ----- From: "BAFB" <bafb@xxxxxxx>
To: <"Undisclosed-Recipient:;"@freelists.org> Sent: Monday, July 05, 2010 12:44 AM Subject: [access-uk] Barcodes and blindnessHello everybody. Thank you for welcoming me on this list. I'm Olivier, a visually impaired Frenchman. So is my girlfriend. As my English is far from perfect, a friend of mine who teaches English, has helped me write this text.
Blind people and all visually impaired struggle in everyday life to identify, find, organize all their shopping (foodstuff), their belongings, various items and all the documents that one piles up awaiting to be classified in order to use them in one's professional or private life.
Today a group of friends have found an inexpensive and almost universal solution which does not require specially adapted equipment other than the one we already have. You most certainly have heard of barcodes. Nowadays you can find new or second-hand equipment that enable the blind or even the deaf-blind (thanks to a vibrator) to capture the barcode of a wide variety of products. We have tested some device and adapted their user's guide to simplify their use in order to
1. find the information about almost every product on the web 2. print our own labels 3. neatly classify every item in our homesIn a near future, we'll even be able to know the best before date of perishable products.
So far some friends have helped me with software they developed for free. Now we have started translating them so that results we have already shared in France can be shared worldwide by any person who wants to recognize food, hygiene and maintenance products, DIY and gardening or print their own label for documents or CD's and DVD's. We are even developing labels that could be sewn onto clothing.
In France, the official Agency for Normalization is working to publish guidelines of good practice so that manufacturers would develop a system to easily locate barcodes on packaging, even tactilely when possible. In doing so we hope that standards will change for the best throughout the whole world.
With the help of a USB barcode scanner and a computer (or even a Mac on internet), or with a nokia phone and a bluetooth barcode scanner, identifying all kinds of products anywhere, anytime becomes a reality ! Add to this that all the necessary software is available for free and can be used with nvda or desktopzoom, then we enter a world where everybody can access the same information.
Should you wish to share our results and your experiences, please join our mailing list by subscribing at http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/barcodes-and-blindness/
! Together we can make information on manufactured products available to everyone.
Let me apologize to all the persons this message might bother. Since our solutions can help a very large number of people, the owner of this group has allowed us to inform you all. May we ask you to
publicize this information and our address to all your friends. By doing so you will help us prove our work was not in vain.
Best regards, Olivier -- I am using the free version of SPAMfighter. We are a community of 7 million users fighting spam. SPAMfighter has removed 172 of my spam emails to date. Get the free SPAMfighter here: http://www.spamfighter.com/len The Professional version does not have this message
