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Handheld Device Reads Printed Words to the Blind
geekotourist writes "3,000 people in Dallas this week for the National Federation of the Blind convention are getting a demonstration of what life is like when you can read printed menus, mail, business cards and memos," reports the Dallas Morning News. The NFB spent two million dollars developing the $3,495 Kurzweil-National Federation of
the Blind Reader, which weighs 15 ounces and combines text-to-speech with sophisticated OCR. The device 'gives the user an initial "situation report," describing what it can see. The user then makes a decision about whether to take a picture. After a few seconds to process the image, the contents of the document are read aloud.' Beta testers describe the joys of reading receipts, CDs, food labels, bulletin boards, conference printouts, or of simply reading books with privacy, without another person's help."
>You are driving on I-80. You are surrounded by cars. ...
>*turn wheel right*
>You have crashed your car. It is on fire.
>*Run away*
>I don't understand "away."
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
Wouldn't braile output be better? It would allow for more privacy without the need for headphones, and I suspect most blind people could read it faster.
----
All of whose base are belong to the what-now?
I wonder what sort of camera resolution and processing power this requires. It would be great if in the near future something like this could be loaded onto an off-the-shelf cameraphone.
As far as current cameraphones go, (picking semi-randomly...) a Treo 700p has a 312MHz XScale processor, and a PPC-6700 has a 416 MHz XScale. Both have 1.3 megapixel cameras.
This has just made your commute to work that much more awkward when the blind gentleman next to you pulls out a Playboy.
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
Yeah, uh, cool. My phone does that and cost a whole lot less, weighs less, and looks really sweet.
I wasn't aware that one blind reader constituted a federation.
</sarcasm>
I seriously had to read that two or three times before it came out right.
-:sigma.SB
WARN
THERE IS ANOTHER SYSTEM
It's probably be noted that the inventor/developer discussed in the article is Raymond Kurzweil, who's recently gotten a lot of press for his book about the technological singularity. Here's a brief blurb from the Wikipedia article about Kurzweil's inventions:
Kurzweil was the principal developer of the first omni-font optical character recognition system, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first CCD flatbed scanner, the first text-to-speech synthesizer, the first electronic musical instrument capable of recreating the sound of a grand piano and other orchestral instruments, and the first commercially marketed large-vocabulary speech recognition system.
Maybe I watch too much TV... but I can sware I seen these before.
Great Intellect...
Braille output would be MUCH LESS expensive. All the machine would have to do is determine the letter and then move 6 sticks up or down to the positions of the braille letter instead of outputting entire words.
As one who is sporadically losing her sight, I would find this very helpful, but do not, as of yet know braille, nor in the middle of medical procedures which may or may not improve the issue in the possible near future, have the time, energy or immediate need to add one more semi-difficult skill to the list of "Help! I'm overwhelmed".
BUT BOY! It would be a handy addition for the research I need right now.
"Never try to teach a pig to sing. It simply wastes your time and truely annoys the pig"
$3495 seems like a lot for what is basically a high-end PDA with a camera. It doesn't even need a screen, should be cheaper...
The device "gives the user an initial 'situation report', describing what it can see.
"You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike."
The comparison is between a complex device made in the dozens, and a complex device made in the billions.
A braile display, which needs to display a line of text - a single changing character wouldn't work, as users slide fingers across the characters - is expensive to produce in the small numbers required.
A sound chip and headphones are used in every mp3 player, HPC and computer in existance. Probably ~50c in bulk amounts.
And as for speed: People who use file readers often have them set to run at 2x-4x speed. As long as the diction is good, it's easy to understand. Especially if you are used to it.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
How hard would it be to come up with a FOSS system to do the same thing? It sounds like the software makes up a good deal of the cost of the device -- with the proper patrons (like the NFB), perhaps you could come up with some system that would just cost as much as the hardware. I mean, heck, the NFB sunk $2 million into the project, and the blind will still have to pay $3500 for the device.
So you'd start with a good digital camera and a small handheld device. Then you need OCR -> text and text -> speech. What's the state of research or code that one could use in FOSS projects? It's been a year or so since I last checked, but AFAIK the current OCR software that's Free just doesn't stack up with that latest commercial products....
coding is life
This is a cool toy, but I wonder how they'll sustain demand for a purely visual text-recognition device when so many of the written items we encounter everyday are going digital anyway. Already many restaurant menus and conference programmes and utility bills are accessible over the Web, local street signs via GPS, and poster/event info via listservs and email lists. Come 2010, what exactly are we going to need to read off slips of paper?
Regarding privacy, is extreme privacy really such a major concern in this situation? I mean, it isn't private information that is being passed along, as much as just reading one's (public) surroundings. I am sure this is much more private than the current method of having a friend reading and explaining everything!
I have a friend who is extremely dyslexic, and thus can't really read. He loves walking down the street listening to books on tape, as it is his only chance to "read". How much more so for someone given a first chance to experience their surroundings like that! Having headphones instead of braille output allows someone complete mobility, instead of having to constantly hold something at all times.
Unity in Diversity
I am. Rather than use my mod points. Fucktard.
A cell-phone for the blind was recently made available to visually impaired people in New Zealand, costing around $300USD. It seems like only a small step further to add some sort of camera/document scanner... This particular device will unquestionably help visually impaired students of particular sciences (e.g. advanced math), where there is almost no demand of Braille versions of textbooks (and even the regular textbooks!) and too many books to pay the conversion to Braille (here I believe it's at least $500?).
You talking about the portable reader- the one that was about the size and weight of a laptop? I saw it a couple of years ago. That isn't the same as software running on a handheld: putting pattern recognition on a Treo sized thing takes some development.
it doesn't look like either of Kurzweil or the National Federation of the Blind are big corporations, or not even a small corporation. And since Kurzweil started working on readers in 1975, I think his dreams could have been big enough to see this coming. It's what all his books are about.
Wait a minute, it doesn't matter.
Ok, I think this could be a very useful device. But... (as usual) I am annoyed.
I hate pricing like "3495". Why not suggest 3500? Especially for a big ticket item such as this. More reasonably, how about 20% over cost? (given its a medical item). Pick a number, and go with it. 3495?
I know -- those pricing tricks work... Oh well.
Ratboy
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
The first description of this idea - although not as a handheld- seems to have been made in 1934, where ' In his 1934 story The Lost Language, writer David H. Keller describes a device that is actually able to make speech from printed text--the sound-transposing machine.'
I saw this demonstrated by Kurzweil a few weeks ago at the Singularity Summit conference at Stanford. He held up the gadget above his book, pushed a button, and it started talking! So simple in concept but so hard to do. The audience went crazy, it was so clear how this would be a world changing gadget for blind people.
The high price for a device that would increase the quality of life of the blind is to me a really good reason for governments to subsidise these for their citizens. I hear americas medical system is expensive and not well supported by government, but Australia has a pretty good record of supporting its citizens medically, this is another opportunity to offer better service than their american counterparts, hopefully america will catch up with their compassion.
!sig
Now I just want a handheld device that reads Japanese kanji characters out loud in English.
I mean, I'm sure it's great for the blind people. But how are all those dogs going to get jobs?
Won't somebody please think of the dogs?
I (and no doubt thousands of other people) had similar ideas. My idea was actually a bit better; how about a phone that can scan menus and read them out loud? How about when you're on vacation and you don't speak the language. Wouldn't it be nice to scan a menu at a restaurant, to have the contents translated to your native language, so you know that you'll be ordering monkey brains? Use it as your mp3 player, and we might also add GPS functionality to it, with mapping software. Small effort to add a tiny DVB receiver so you can watch TV as well. I believe that killer devices like that will soon become possible; the only thing holding them back is power; usually almost half the volume and more than half the weight of portable devices is being used by the battery pack. Once fuel cell technology is efficient and reduced in size enough, you'll see those very usable devices come to the market.
How does it handle ... images?
"I see a blond babe, with huuuuuge...."
TC - My Photos..
It sounds simpler than it is. Braille cell displays are extremely expensive today, unfortunately. an example of braille cell display pricing
I remember reading back many moons ago that photo software (Photoshop for one I believe) recognized money and refused to work with it on the chance the user might be trying to counterfeit it (never mind the number of legal uses for doing such a thing). I sure hope that that algorithm made it into this gadget but instead to recognize both the currency and amount.
:wq
I realize this was a troll but I can't resist because there some people who actually think they feel that way until they start to think. Natural selection, eh? OK, run naked into the woods with no tools, no supplies, and live off the land for one year. You're not allowed to make primitive tools because this is natural selection, right? Survival of the fittest? Oh wait, you mean you were given a brain to use? Imagine that, so just perhaps, our ability to think, work in groups (tribal hunting), and have a variety of skills and strengths and being able to make use of them *IS* letting natural selection take it's place. Believe it or not, there are blind people who have contributed to society.
As a side note, since you are probably between 18 and 35 (notice I'm trying to give you the benefit fo the doubt) I can guarantee that if you haven't died in 50 years (which is quite likely) you will be going blind if not already legally blind. Are you going to kill yourself? Sit in your home and never go out letting someone else treat you like an incompetent child? Or are you going to take some Mobility lessons, fork out a few grand and move about with independence and read your own restaurant menus and street signs and food labels.
When you're young and healthy it's easy to be cocky. But I assure you, nobody gets out of here alive and those who live the longest all lose their vision. Do you wanna live forever, punk?
For some reason, I remember seeing Stevie Wonder with a device like this on a commercial about 15 years ago. He was using it to read fan mail. Was that device fake or is this story non-news?
Anyone else remember this ad?
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Plain and simple. If being blind doesn't impact your ability to reproduce, then you are still "fit" by the only meaning of the term in natural selection.
It does not matter if you have an IQ of 150+ or have 20/10 vision. In the end we are all less fit than Sultans with big harems and hundreds of children, or even many NBA players with dozens of children who have no talent beyond a good jump shot!
Can be pretty humbling. Which is good. Maybe us "intellectually fit" people need to reproduce more if we want our genes to pass on and eventually be a sign of fitness.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
What do the barcodes offer that GPS does not? And if you are going to use something like barcodes why not rfid instead?
I can understand the logic of barcodes 10-20 years ago but in this day and age it sounds like a project that has been around to long and been surpassed by technology. Am I wrong?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I didn't read TFA, but isn't *some* sight required to perform alignment tasks?
How long under we see custom designed ones that fit into an eye socket? :)
Does a story have to concern electronics in some way to make slashdot?
I've worn corrective lenses since 1959 (second grade), glasses until 2003 when I switched to contacts. My uncorrected vision two weeks ago was worse than 20-400; I could read at 20 feet what normally sighted folks could read at over 400 feet.
As I got older, I'd pull my glasses down my nose to read. When I got contact lenses I got reading glasses, changing me from "four-eyes" to "six-eyes".
Last year I was informed by my eye doctor I had a cataract in my left eye, and my vision could only be corrected to 20-40 in that eye. He sent me to an eye surgeon.
I was offered a new technology, approved by the FDA only three years ago. It is a new cataract implant that cures cataracts, nearsightedness, farsightedness, and astigmatism.
I spent the extra cash on it and got the implant a week ago. Now I'm "three-eyes" as my left eye is 20-16 and I no longer need reading glasses! For the first time in my life I have no restrictions on my driver's license!
In effect, I was worse than blind without my glasses as legally blind is uncorrectable 20-200 vision (although, of course, mine was correctable). I can now see at 20 feet what normally sighted folks have to be no more than sixteen feet away to see, And for the first time in my life I can read without glasses! My sight is so good I can read the date on a penny at arm's length, and it gets better every day.
So I searched slashdot for the 2003 story on this piece of miraculous technology I have implanted in my left eye, and got nothing. A search for "cataract" also turned up nothing.
I'd think that as this is a nerd site, probably over 95% of its readers wear corrective lenses of some sort. Your bad eyesight can be completely cured, if it is caused by one or more of the four medical conditions I mentioned!
A cure for blindness trumps a gizmo that reads to the blind any day, and they had a reader like this thirty years ago (albeit the size of a washing machine).
Somebody submit a atory about this fairly new tech. After all, OCR isn't very earth shaking. Curing blindness is!
...tracts of land?
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
I recall seeing little $100-ish devices in the catalog you get on airplanes that claim to read a word from paper, translates it into another language, and speaks it for you in that language. Why is something that only does a fraction of that somehow interesting? Because it is intended for use by visually impaired people instead of tourists?
*rolls eyes*
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
The one in the video seems pretty old. Is it limited by processing power or something?
I certainly hope they aren't planning to take any pictures of copyrighted works...
This puts me in mind of another use for a nice, cheap ebook device. It could read books to the blind. Call me blind as well, I never thought of it before I read the article.
At risk of going even further offtopic, what would be the chances of makezining a cheap ebook device from parts? I only ask because this article causes me to think that its a cultural travesty that no one makes an open-spec ebook for less than a hundred bucks. We need reading devices for so many things; textbooks, saving paper, saving our backs when we lift those boxes of books on moving day, and now letting blind people read without assistance. We need them, and never will know how much we can't live without them until someone makes one that people want to use.
To get better positional accuracy, you need to move to differential GPS (DGPS), which is GPS coupled with precisely located ground-based transponders (LORAN and others) to get a differential positioning which is used to average and reduce the error level of standard GPS to something much more precise. Depending on the equipment used, this can be very accurate (in +/- X centimeters, in some cases).
I would imagine if you wanted to do something like this for a home or other indoor location, you wouldn't do it with standard GPS but rather with some other localized positional transponder system just for the area in question. Even so, it seems like it would take a lot of relatively expensive equipment which may or may not work all the time, possibly leaving "dead spots" and such which might make interior navigation more difficult (and not to mention, more expensive to install).
The choice to use barcodes is actually a very sound and wise decision, in my opinion. It is easy to deploy (need a new barcode to tag a new description to? Print it out and stick it up!), and it is something that, given a high enough resolution camera with a wide enough field of view (or multiple cameras, more likely), coupled with enough processing power (to decode and read barcodes from a distance and/or at an angle and under different lighting conditions), becomes very easy to use. For a sighted person, seeing barcodes everywhere might not make good asthetic sense, but to a blind or otherwise visually impaired person, they probably don't care.
It isn't that you are wrong, you are just falling for the fallacy that "new and high-tech" means "better and cheaper", which can sometimes be the case, though in many cases another choice (of a mature, reliable, time-tested, and inexpensive technology), might be the better solution for the problem at hand.
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Perhaps now with a combined Dobelle implant (Google it, can't find any one official site) and this reader, they can see the lines of what they're viewing AND have it read to them. Getting closer and closer, just need to add color and we're 90% of the way there.
In the mid-1970 I worked with a blind programmer who used a tactile reader about 1/4 the size of a typical deck of playing cards - about two fingers wide and one long. He would insert his finger tip into a hole in the reader onto a pad of pulsing/vibrating pins and scan the device across a line of text, allowing him to read quite rapidly. I belive it just produced a lager image of what was under the scanning window rather than Braille but it obviously suited his needs well.
or better yet, how about $50 so the fucktarded blind will get them and eventually explode from some design flaw and the fucktarded blind are out of the god-damned gene pool?
GO AHEAD FUKING FLAME AWAY!