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"."

Comments

Listening speed

[shanen]

Remember that the TTS (text to speech) programs are mostly developed by sighted people, and to them listening is kind of secondary. Blind people get lots of extra practice and learn to concentrate very well on the words. They actually did some research on this and found that experienced blind computer users could understand speech at rates well beyond the fastest settings of their TTS systems.

I wonder if they could practice doing it with different voices in each ear? That would be pretty amazing...