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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)."
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.
Security through promiscuity is no better than security through obscurity.
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.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
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.
Help I'm a rock.
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.
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.
Look a monkey!
.. 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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