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

MagicVision

[Glonoinha]

I would like to propose a nice piece of optic quality clear plastic in the shape of a lens, large enough to be useful but small enough to be handy. This piece of plastic could be molded into a convex shape such that light rays passing through it would appear larger to someone looking at someone through it. We could also mold a plastic handle on it, and maybe even throw in a protective case to keep it from getting scratched.

Magnifying lenses - they're not just for scorching bugs anymore!

Naw, that would never work. Carry on with the cybernetic implants for old people.

You could always try

[skinfitz]

Moving your head closer to the object?

It's like the built in zoom function of the human body.

With reference to Red Dwarf

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.

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.

Personal Experience

[jtheory]

Using the "built-in" zoom and big magnifying glasses is the *current* solution. The poster is looking for something better.

And honestly, just getting closer can be embarrassing and doesn't always work. You can't climb up on the counter at McDonalds to peer at the menu overhead. And say the store shelf labels are 6" off the ground but you have to be less than 1 foot away to see (with your magnifying glass), plus you're 75 years, arthritic, and there are people waiting behind you.

I don't have macular degenaration, but I do have some vision problems (floaters, cataracts in both eyes.. and I'm still legal to drive, so watch out!) so I have some sense of this. My wife helps me pick out my meal at candlelit restaurants, because I can't read the menu in low light. Sometimes I use binoculars at airports and places like that where far-away signs are important. No big deal, but I can imagine how tough it would be for people worse off than I am.

It would be beautiful to have something like this -- a PDA attachment with a directional, zoomable camera lens. My example above could stay standing by the grocery cart, tilting the PDA with camera at 4x zoom down at the bottom row of labels. Even if people around notice the function of the PDA, it's a cool modern device -- not some ridiculous old person crouching like some kind of comic private detective among the condensed soup cans. Same situation at airports or restaurants -- I could be just checking my email to the casual observer. Binoculars make airport personnel nervous (only a terrorist would need to scope out an airport like that), and setting a napkin on fire for a little more light on the menu might be effective, but it sure would be nicer to just check the well-lit LCD screen.

On to the question at hand -- the tech is obviously possible -- a good digital camera with good zoom would actually do much of this, and some PDAs now have camera functionality in them (though it's mostly not very good, and won't be able to do the zooming well enough). Oh, and some airports don't let you take photos inside (Paris CDG doesn't, for one -- I found this out just a few weeks ago).

So we need mid-range camera tech mated to a bigger LCD screen then a camera normally has (someone with macular degeneration would probably need at least the size of a large PDA screen, probably a little bigger). If there were a large demand, this thing would probably cost $200. As is, if they exist I'd expect a pricetag more like $2000, simply because that's how these things seem to work.

The best bet I think is to get a camera with a good analog zoom and large LCD, and make it a "holster" with one of those magnifying sheets over the LCD and a hole for the power and zoom buttons (simplify the interface... you aren't using it as a camera anyway).

This should all get easier as time passes -- cameras are getting better and cheaper, and the LCD screens on them are getting larger and higher quality every day.