[Blindtlk] [acb-l] Google Goggles

[Szostak, Christine]

Hi,
  DO you mean Talking Goggles or is this a different app? If so, I would be interested to know what it is as I would guess if it is from Google, it works more adequately with Windows than would the Talking Goggles app.
Happy Monday all!
Chris

Dr. Christine M. Szostak
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Department of Social Sciences
Shorter University
Rome, Georgia
szostak.1 at osu.edu<mailto:szostak.1 at osu.edu>
cszostak at shorter.edu

From: Kathy Blackburn [mailto:kblackbn at austin.rr.com]
Sent: Monday, August 24, 2015 9:22 AM
To: Szostak, Christine <szostak.1 at buckeyemail.osu.edu>; acb-l at acblists.org; Blind Talk Mailing List <blindtlk at nfbnet.org>
Subject: Re: [acb-l] Google Goggles

A few times when my Windows laptop wasn't booting properly, I got Google Goggles to read enough of the screen that I could figure out what to do.

Kathy Blackburn
kblackbn at austin.rr.com<mailto:kblackbn at austin.rr.com>
On 8/23/2015 12:58 AM, Szostak, Christine via acb-l wrote:
Hi All,
  I know that when the KNFB Reader app came out, for those with devices, this was fantastic. Prior to this, many of us used things like Text Detective… which were not optimal options for the blind as you needed to be really good with the camera and knowing where the text was located.

  One app that also came out before the reader was that of Talking Goggles. When I got the Reader, this app sort of went off of my radar as likely, it did for many of you.

  However, of late, I have found myself getting a little frustrated with the Reader, especially as I use it on an iPod instead of an iPhone and thus it is slower and can mess up a bit more.

  Recently, I went back to the Talking Goggles app to test out its versatility.

  For those who do not know this app, it is  a text-to-speech app, but it differs from the Reader in that it uses live video to read things (also it is  quite cheep compared to the Reader, I do not remember the cost but significantly less). IN other words, as soon  as the camera focuses on something that has text, the app will begin reading it. As you move the item the app automatically updates. Note that you can take pictures and presumably  send them to the cloud or email (though not really sure as I do not use it in this way) so you do not need to use the live video part.

  The reason I bring this app up is that I have found it to be quite good at locating and reading the text of things like small spice jars, clocks, and other such things without having to take a pic and wait for it to be processed. For example, Yesterday I was able to use it to accurately distinguish between all of the spice jars I have only using this app and likely in less time than I would have needed had I been using the Reader app. Had I used the Reader app, for each jar, I would have likely had to take a pic, wait for it to process, take another if it did not recognize the text, read the results,  and if the part of the label I scan was not the part with the needed information, I would have had to repeat this process over and over until finding the right location on the label. IN contrast, with the Talking Goggles app, I simply placed the jar on the counter, held the camera over it (you could use a Scan Stand… for this), waited a moment for the camera to focus, and then simply continued to slowly turn the jar until I heard the needed information. Sometimes the app would continuously read as the jar was moved, sometimes I needed to wait about .5-3 sec for it to focus again. This process was much easier and faster in my opinion (and a lot less time consuming:)).

  Note that the app can be a little slow if you are using a 5th Gen iPod but I think this is just because the camera takes more time to focus. It has a fair number of languages and the speech is quite clear. It is not Samantha  though like the Reader.

  I just thought I would mention this app since I think it got lumped  in with all of the other TTS apps sadly when the Reader came out. Note that it has just been updated and it seems much more stable and accurate than it use to be.

  Note that this is just my own personal opinion based on my personal  experience with the Reader app (so I will understand if others disagree with this view as this is just what I have found works well for me personally). When the Reader app first came out, I had a lot better luck with it than I seem to have had after newer updates came out (likely just me:)).
Happy Sunday!
Chris

Dr. Christine M. Szostak
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Department of Social Sciences
Shorter University
Rome, Georgia
szostak.1 at osu.edu<mailto:szostak.1 at osu.edu>
cszostak at shorter.edu<mailto:cszostak at shorter.edu>