[blindLaw] Openbooks 9.0 by freedom scientific or Kurzweil 1000—for reading and writing

[Aser Tolentino]

I’m currently maintaining CoCounsel and ChatGPT subscriptions, but I also
still keep K1000 on my computer too. I always liked Kurzweil more, and if a
rehabilitation agency is going to provide a license to one or the other,
I’d go with that. It also comes with a few decent VoiceWare SAPI 5 voices
that can be used system wide FWIW I think OpenBook’s big claim to fame was
always its document camera support with the Pearl, but that sort of
capability is so ubiquitous now and the interface is otherwise so basic
that I’d say it isn’t the killer feature it once was, especially since JAWS
OCR can directly capture from a camera now anyway.

Practically speaking, JAWS OCR and particularly OCR to Word are probably
the most useful day to day tools for that kind of thing outside of books.
In law school, K1000 was what helped me plow through reading because after
ingesting the books and saving as .kes files, navigation was just so fast.
Everyone’s experience will vary though, because technology has changed so
much in the span of even the last decade.


On Thu, Oct 23, 2025 at 9:25 PM gary via BlindLaw <blindlaw at nfbnet.org>
wrote:

> Both of these products have not been developed in a long time with e age
> of AI .
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: BlindLaw <blindlaw-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of omar duncan via
> BlindLaw
> Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2025 12:48 PM
> To: Blind Law Mailing List <blindlaw at nfbnet.org>
> Cc: omar duncan <oduncan821 at gmail.com>
> Subject: [blindLaw] Openbooks 9.0 by freedom scientific or Kurzweil
> 1000—for reading and writing
>
> Hello does anyone know if openbooks 9.0 by freedom Scientific is better or
> Kurzweil 1000
>
> What has better ocr, better scanning and speed, better human like  voices
> and better features overall.
>
> Also, when it comes to using openbooks or Kurzweil 1000 as a writing  tool
> for typing, are there any program  that are better than the other in these
> areas?
>
> Also,  what is better in the overall department?
>
> More importantly, for the purposes of law school, which software is better
> suited for handling law school workload like casebook reading and other
> books or handouts?
>
> Lastly, which one is better for low vision use—partially sighted user.
>
> I appreciate anyone feedback and insight here.
>
>
> Thanks for everyone attention
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