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Converting Images Into Sounds for the Blind
prostoalex writes "ACM News Service links to a page on Cornell University Web site that describes a technology developed by researchers to enable blind people to read maps. According to the article, the software package consists of "Java computer code that could translate images into sound, and a rudimentary software program capable of converting pixels of various colors into piano notes of various tones"."
As a blind person why bother when you have winamp tv porn? Maybe it will work for reading that fucking immage to create an account, damn just use a sound file like paypal.
"This could be done much faster in my favourite language X"!
Starting countdown to first comment..NOW.
Seriously though, this sounds great. My previous job was at the Swedish national library for the blind/visually disabled. Their lives have gotten a LOT easier with technology, and especially the net, but there are still lots of problems.
The greatest service you can do to them is make sure all web pages you make are HTML 4.01 compliant though. Alt tags for pictures are of course important (even if it just saying "logo"), and screen reader programs are not as forgiving as IE/Mozilla/Firefox et al when it comes to confusing tags.
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
Well, the article uses weather maps. I have met a blind man who at a party drove a car some 10 meters on a dare. :-)
I wonder if the brain can be trained to "see" a mental 3D image from these sounds and how long it would take. A blind woman I knew was an experienced computer user and she had her screen reader set to max speed. For me it was impossible to hear what it was saying, the reader did not attempt to use pronounciation rules, it was all just a confusing staccato of fast phonemes which blended into each other. "ATT-ECK-APP-SA-BA..." Not very pleasant to listen to, but she had no problem "reading" letters using this almost as fast as I could with my eyes.
Perhaps children can learn to see a full picture from sounds, but I wonder about adults. I have tried a "picture book" for blind children. The images were large and very simple. There were in 3D, but very flattened of course, and always "from ahead". Different material textures were used (fuzzy fabric for papa bear's fur, rippled plastic for water etc), but it was INCREDIBLY difficult for me to "see" with my fingers what an image was if I hadn't peeked beforehand. Any attempt to include some sort of perspective would have made it impossible.
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
Brings to mind Coagula, the "Industrial Strength Color-Note Organ", which converts .bmp files to synth sounds.
Already existed in 2002 ;-)
/* Steinar */
(This comment is of course GPLed.)
For the uninitiated:
Actually, it is possible and done all the time to an extent. I teach blind and visually impaired children and adults to use the computer with speech output. In some cases my clients are working in customer service phone pools. Their headset has two inputs, one from the phone and one from the PC. They are listening to and speaking to the customer while at the same time listening to and inputting information to the PC. It requires a good deal of skill and concentration but you'd be surprised at your odds of speaking to a blind person when you call a customer service phone line.