Good news for anyone who is blind or suffering from seriously failing eyesight. There is a new portable gadget on the market that allows sight impaired individuals to "read" printed documents anywhere, at home or away, without the aid of a sighted person.
Favorable reviews by the Mossberg Solution (Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, July 26, 2006) for the Kurzwell-National Federation of the Blind Reader (K-NFB Reader). The gadget takes a digital picture of a page of text, and then reads it aloud to the blind person, either through a speaker or through earphones.
The Reader proved effective on a wide variety of documents. Users only need to hold the Reader over a printed menu, an airline ticket, a business cards, magazines and mail. In seconds they hear the contents of the printed document played back in clear synthetic speech. The reader can also read documents from computers or other devices. It isn’t perfect yet, and still has trouble interpreting hightly stylized lettering. It is a little bulky but still quite effective. This gadget is made up of a personal digital assistance (PDA) stuck to a digital camera. The camera captures the image, then sends the image to the PDA, which uses software to translate and read aloud the document in just 30 seconds.
The Reader is expensive (about the same as a flat screen television so put your priorities in order), but it is simple to use and works quickly. It is the closest way that a blind person can find to reading without using Braille. It has the power to revolutionize a persons life. (www.knfbreader.com).
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