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Seeing-Eye Computer Guides Blind

Posted by simoniker on from the jpegs-also-readable dept.

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)."

20 of 136 comments (clear)

  1. ATM's by slimsam1 · · Score: 4, Funny

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


    ;-)

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    1. Re:ATM's by prichardson · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

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      Help I'm a rock.
    2. Re:ATM's by zakezuke · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      Two things

      1) Pedestrians are not allowed to use the drive through cash machine, blind or otherwise, for safty reasons. If you were blind would you want to wander where the cars go? Know of any fast food places that take orders for fast food without a car? Would your drive up teller do business with a pedestrian?

      2) I've noticed that while they have put brail on drive up cash machines... none of the ones *I* know about have any sorta voice ability. As in a blind man can use one, know where the buttons are, but isn't going to know the first menu is 3rd button for english, 5th for spanish. Let alone the menu after you hit withdraw is asking for the hot buttons for the ammount of cash, or the last right one for other ammount, is this correct, do you want a rescript.

      I have walked a few blind people through the process, well until the bank manager yelled at us for being pedestrians in the drive through lane. Each of the people I helped decided just to use the debit at the local supermarket. Far less dangerious.

      I'm all for brail being standard on these machines. I'm all for rectroactivly putting brail stickers on the machines. However expeding blind people to just use the drive through lane is a touch silly!

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      There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
    3. Re:ATM's by batura · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The other thing is really obvious... Just becuase it is a drive up ATM, it doesn't mean that the driver is the one using the ATM. I've had my friend drive to my bank while I was in the back seat and went ahead and used the drive through ATM from there.

      A blind person could do the same if someone drove them there. It allows them to use the machine without assistance.

    4. Re:ATM's by zcat_NZ · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Verne has the same problem; he complained about the high 'teller' charges, and the bank told him that he should use the ATM machine. "they have braile on the buttons".

      Well, there's a couple of problems with that. Not all (relatively few, apparently!) blind people know braile for a start. Verne doesn't.

      And the ATM machine doesn't provide any feedback.
      They don't speak, and when they beep it's only to draw attention to something on the screen.

      There's no indication that the machine accepted the pin number, got the right account, declined a transaction due to insufficient funds, or anything. Need your account balance? forget it!

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  2. Photography and copyright by TACD · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is a great idea, but I can see issues arising when this is used in an environment which stipulates 'no photography' or in any circumstance where photography would be discouraged. People trust dogs to be unable to reproduce images or sounds they've experienced after the fact, I doubt that a machine would ever be granted this same trust.

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    Security through promiscuity is no better than security through obscurity.
  3. Wrong, imprecise blurb by gmhowell · · Score: 5, Insightful

    which allows any individual who is blind to read a normal library book through this product,

    This is wrong for two reasons. First, this only helps blind people who can hear. Yes, that's most of them, but not 'any' individual.

    Second, you are wrong that this allows a blind person to read a book. This allows a book to be read to a blind person. These are two different situations. Some Braille advocacy groups have participated in and helped publish studies showing that books on tape are processed differently that literature that is read. Those who read have better comprehension and retention of both the text, and provide better analysis of the subtext.

    Being read to is not a substitute for being able to read. Teach a man to fish and all of that. Nifty technology, but the submitter and author of the linked article present it as something it isn't.

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    Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
    1. Re:Wrong, imprecise blurb by gmhowell · · Score: 3, Informative

      Nowhere did I say that a blind person shouldn't be able to do that, or use the tech. What I complained about is that the blurb and article are not well written. Fact: it does not let a blind person read. The only way I am aware of that allows a blind person to read is with braille or some other tactile writing method. Fact: it only helps some (admittedly, most) blind people.

      As far as if blind people want the tech, let me ask my wife...

      OK, I'm back, she's not interested, because she's also deaf. What she would like is more and cheaper refreshable braille devices, and DRM-free e-Books.

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      Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
  4. Hmmmm by Neil+Blender · · Score: 4, Funny

    That explains why my dog has been moping around all day. His dreams have been crushed.

  5. But... Can it read PrOn? by Cordath · · Score: 3, Funny

    If that dohickey can describe the contents of a playboy to a blind man in sufficient detail to give him a high quality woody then I say it's nobel prize time. Why? It's no big deal for a blind man to find someone to read literature to him. However, it is considerably more difficult for a blind man to find someone willing to describe naked women to him while he jerks his gerkin. Do you have any idea what kind of overtime the average aide would charge for that level of service?

  6. I'd rather have a queer-eye computer by britneys+9th+husband · · Score: 3, Funny

    Instead of having a seeing eye computer, I'd rather have a queer-eye computer that could tell me whether or not my clothes match in the morning.

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  7. Reminds me of my dorm life by Neil+Blender · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is totally OT but when I was a freshman I had a blind neighbor in the dorm who subscribed to a braille version of Playboy. It came in a cardboard box because it took four bound paper volumes for each edition - each one was at least an inch thick. Of course, we made all the obvious jokes about the pictures being in braille.

  8. Sight for the blind. by s0rbix · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I am curious to know if there are any systems in development to let blind people regain their vision through the use of computers/computer implants.

  9. Is it just me, or... by Quattro+Vezina · · Score: 3, Funny

    Did anyone else misread the headline as saying that the ``seeing eye computer guides'' were blind?

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  10. Interesting but.... by seanvaandering · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I work for a Major ISP in tech support, and I've heard some of these things actually work over the phone, and I'm all for technology that enriches peoples lives, however, listening to some of these calls, I've noticed that for instance,

    1. These programs read absolutely everything on a screen thats displayed.
    2. The people using them usually have the speed/pitch turned up to max to get through the nonsense, and therefore the computer sounds like its got the Smurfs (tm) trapped inside.

    Has the technology gotten better than this or is it still as annoying to hear? I'd hate to be a library listening to that in the background...

  11. For hearing impaired by Tablizer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    About 10 years ago I though about a device that allows deaf people to "see" sound by looking at a spectragraph of sound waves. Researchers have learned how to read spoken words by studying spectragraphs, so I figure deaf people could also be trained. Now such software could probably be put on an off-the-shelf pocket computer instead of a custom device.

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    Table-ized A.I.
  12. Mobile Eye Phone by halftrack · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This reminds me of a project in Norway. In relation to the upcoming UMTS rollout here, Telenor - the largest Norwegian telco - is introducing something they call Mobile Eye Phone. It's basically just a camera, microphone and earplugs connected via UMTS to a remote guide. He gets a live video feed and can assist the blind person in navigating in new places. I've seen this on TV tested with a blind person taking his 6 year old daugther on a trip out of the country and it seemed to work really well. Given that the person only need to place a call when he need help navigating.

    A combination of the two technology would create a fallback when this new technology fail. And it will fail, just look at OCR.

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    Look a monkey!
  13. For comparison/benchmarking... by smartsight · · Score: 4, Informative

    Related experimental technology for the blind is also available for free elsewhere ("The vOICe"): Mobile OCR for the blind includes speech recognition and speech synthesis support. Currently the proof-of-concept demonstrator uses the GOCR OCR engine, but other (object?) recognition engines can be easily added. Stereo vision for the blind

  14. Re:Curiosity, thy friend is Google. by halftrack · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

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    Look a monkey!
  15. similar to something I wrote.. by zcat_NZ · · Score: 5, Interesting

    .. well, still working on, in my 'copious free time'.

    My blind friend uses a barcode reader to scan cans and bottles in his cupboards. At the moment, the script looks up the product description from a textfile provided by the local supermarket, but we've found things like "WAT TM SSE" to be less-than-ideal. (it runs under linux, scanner plugs into keyboard plug, script runs on console, greps for barcode and reads the 'description' via festival.)

    The next version, his wife will be able to scan the groceries and record a proper description, cooking instructions, etc, as short mp3 files while she unpacks the weekly shopping.

    So, no more cat-food or tomato-sauce incidents when he's looking for a can of spagetti for lunch!

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