Inexpensive Reading Assistance Device?

N8F8 asks: "I would like to come up with an inexpensive reading assist device for the visually impaired. Something that would give them a close-up view of things without having to stoop over. For under $500. What I would like is a method to connect a USB/Firewire webcam to a CDMA phone or PDA and display the picture in real-time. Or replace the PDA with an inexpensive eyeglass mounted display. Are there better options?"

"Over 1.2 million Americans are in the advanced stages of Macular Degeneration. People with very poor vision have a hard time reading everyday items like food labels, grocery store signs and newspapers. Many have resorted to carrying around large magnifying glasses and other tools so they can stoop over or pull things close enough to read. As you might imagine, this can make everyday chores rather cumbersome.

Initially, two ideas came to mind:

• A coherent fiber optic cable with a taper end to magnify the image
• A portable video camera connected to a tiny LCD monitor

A quick posting to the sci.optics newsgroup killed the first approach. Price, performance and reliability tip the scales in favor of the second option.

The second option brought several possibilities to mind. Tiny cameras are cheap and plentiful- from USB/Firewire webcams to tiny spy cams. The ideal device would have built-in auto focus. The Apple iSight is the only webcam I've found with built in auto focus, are there others?

Tiny monitors are another matter. Many articles covering 'near eye displays', 'heads up displays' and 'head mounted displays' have been published. There are even a few interesting products on the market. Unfortunately they are all extremely expensive.

Nearly every new PDA, CDMA phone, digital camera and digital video camera contains a nice little LCD screen. Perhaps using one of these devices could help keep the cost down?"

Comments

I heard a review of the device you want

[Andy_R]

BBC Radio 4 has a regular programme for the visually impaired, which I happened to catch while driving home from the office the other day, and a prototype device was being reviewed that matches your description very well.

The programme's home page is here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/intouch.shtml
the show is archived there for 1 week, in realplayer format, so you have until next Tuesday if you want to hear it too.

From the show's factsheet:

Geoff Adams-Spink reviewed Pico, one of the new generation of lightweight portable video magnifiers. It's manufactured by Telesensory, which has a UK office that can advise on ordering the product, which will be priced at around 500.

PICO's main features:
pocket-sized video magnifier
integrated rechargeable battery
full colour and negative modes
magnification at 5X

CONTACTS

TELESENSORY UK
Operations
2 Millfield House
Woodshots Meadow
Croxley Business Park
Watford
Hertfordshire WD18 8YX
Tel: 0808 0908090 (Freephone number)
Tel: 01923 231313
Fax: 01923 231385
E-mail: uk@telesensory.com
Taking orders for Pico now and the product will be available from the middle of February.

If calling from outside the UK, you'll need to drop the leading 0 from those numbers and add the international code to the UK, and the Freephone call won't be free ionternationally.

if this device doesn't do the trick (it might end up a little pricey since the usual technology exchage rate of $1=1 that Americans hit us colonials with might only work one way), how about a thin plastic fresenel lens? Portable, cheap and effective.

One possibility.

[Meowing]

These people have the display down to something resembling a reasonable price.

Have you played with the MiniVID cameras (dealers abound) that usually go into microscopes? They also come with a little fixed-focus lens that might work out pretty well for the types of things a magnifying glass would normally do. Worth a look anyway.

That all said, I think this kind of arrangment would still be awfully clunky, what with cables and batteries to deal with. Maybe it would be reasonable in a home or office setting though.

Macular Degeneration.

[Lando]

I notice a lot of people suggesting magnifying classes and the like, however I have a couple of comments on Macular Degerneration.

Macular Degeneration is not merely marked by difficulty to see small things it is a condition that degenerats the light receptors in the eye itself. Primarily the portion of the eye that is used to see straight ahead. So basically they people end up using periphial(sp?) vision in order to see since most of their eyesight straight ahead is gone.

The need to increase the size of the text is not an issue of being able to focus on the text, but is a need to greatly magnify the text so that it can be seen out the corner of their eyes. Near-sighted and farsighted issues are completely different.

I too am interested in a low cost solution to allow the people I know to read letters, but it can be desk based... Currently I think the best option is to use a camera plugged into a 42" or larger television. But I would like to hear other suggestions.

PS. A recent report in Science news in suggests that there may be hope of treatment to stem the loss of sight. Soon it may prevent people with this condition from getting any worse. However it will not improve any loss vision. Improvement will probably have to wait on artificial eyes.

Re:Macular Degeneration.

[AuMatar]

My grandmother has macular degeneration, and loves to read. We bought her an opte-lec. She has an old model- a desk based black and white unit, that feeds data to a closed circuit TV. But going to their site i see they have color units now that are light enough to be carried. Just no laptop style screens yet.

Re:MagicVision

[liquidice5]

hahahahah
hahaha
haha
ha
no

Its not that easy for people with macular degeneration, they get splotches in their eyes where they cant see anything, and basically have to rely on periferal vision to see anything