Seeing-Eye Computer Guides Blind

sushant_bhatia writes "Wired News has a story about seeing-eye computer guides for the blind. This is an interesting piece on efforts at Arizona State University and Wright State University to provide features for individuals who are blind. A very interesting project is called the iCare Reader, which allows any individual who is blind to read a normal library book through this product, which 'uses optical character-recognition software along with other software that compensates for different lighting conditions and orientations of the text.' Further details on this can be found at The Center for Cognitive Ubiquitous Computing (Cubic)."

Comments

Re:ATM's

[prichardson]

Maybe now we can stop paying for braille buttons at drive-through ATM's.

Yes, I know it was a joke.

There's actually a really good explanation for this. It actually keeps costs down to have braille on the drive-though ATMs. If braille is on every ATM the only difference between a drive-through ATM and an ATM that you can walk to is where it's located. Since only one model is needed to do everything, costs go down. It really is that simple.

Re:Curiosity, thy friend is Google.

[halftrack]

Some time ago (in 2002) there was a story on /. linking to this Wired article which I remember as interesting. By stimulating certain areas of the brain they were trying to tap directly in to the visual center of the brain and create an image.

I also found this more recent article that predicts the technology to be avaiable in 4-5 years time.