[Nfb-idaho] FW: [Reader-users] Found in the Boston Globe

[Brett Winches]

-----Original Message-----
From: reader-users-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:reader-users-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Dave Wright
Sent: Monday, April 27, 2009 9:08 AM
To: Kurzweil National Federation of the Blind Reader user list
Subject: [Reader-users] Found in the Boston Globe

The Portable EYE:
>When Peter Alan Smith pulls out his phone in a crowded Back Bay 
>restaurant, there's no clue that his Nokia is by far the most expensive 
>mobile phone in the entire place. He has about $2,400 in software 
>loaded onto the $600 device.
>
>But then it becomes apparent what's unique about Smith's phone: A flash 
>goes off when he snaps a picture of the menu, and a few seconds later, 
>his phone has translated the page of text into speech, and started 
>reciting the options through his earpiece at a rapid clip.
>
>Smith developed a degenerative eye disease when he was 18, and he is 
>now legally blind. It has been about two decades since he could read a 
>restaurant menu independently. He first heard about the phone on a 
>podcast series called "Blind Cool Tech" and took out a low-interest 
>loan to buy it.
>
>"At work, I can take a picture of two different documents to figure out 
>which is which,"
>says Smith, who works for John Hancock. "At home, if I'm making chili, 
>I can take a picture of a can to make sure it's the kidney beans before 
>I open it."
>
>The software that translates the text in high-resolution digital photos 
>into speech is made by KNFB Reading Technologies Inc. in Wellesley 
>Hills. It was developed by Ray Kurzweil, the local inventor who has 
>been coming up with technological breakthroughs for the blind since the 
>mid-1970s. But as with many of his innovations, Kurzweil plans for the 
>software to be useful - perhaps incredibly useful - to sighted users in 
>a few years from now.
>
>Kurzweil released his first reading machine, developed in partnership 
>with the National Federation for the Blind, in 1976; on the day it was 
>unveiled, TV anchor Walter Cronkite used its speech synthesizer as he 
>signed off the air. The device could scan printed pages, decipher the 
>letters, and speak the words aloud. It was about the size of a washing 
>machine and cost $50,000. Stevie Wonder bought the first production 
>model, Kurzweil recalls.
>
>In the decades that followed, much of the scanning and speech 
>technology Kurzweil developed evolved into the scanners and scanning 
>software now built into many printers and PCs. Burlington-based Nuance 
>Communications Inc. sells several software products originally created 
>by Kurzweil to convert printed documents into text.
>
>In 2002, the president of the National Federation of the Blind asked 
>Kurzweil about portable reading technology; though his reading machine 
>had gotten smaller, it still resided on a desktop. "There's a lot of 
>printed material that you don't want to bring back to your desk - or 
>you can't - like a sign on a wall or a bank ATM display," Kurzweil 
>says.
>
>Kurzweil predicted a pocket-size reading machine was only about six 
>years away.
>Kurzweil and the federation began collaborating to develop the 
>necessary software. It had to be smart enough to interpret a photo 
>taken at any angle, in any sort of lighting, with random images 
>sometimes in the background.
>
>An interim device, released in 2006, married a Canon digital camera 
>with a personal digital assistant; it sold for $3,500. The cellphone 
>version debuted earlier this year. It works only on a Nokia N82 phone, 
>which features a built-in 5-megapixel camera, with flash. The camera 
>offers spoken feedback to the user as to whether it has captured the 
>entire page. After about 20 or 30 seconds of processing the image and 
>turning it into text, it starts speaking. The standard phone with 
>software sells for $2,145, but also includes a talking GPS system, and 
>the ability to read any Web page to its user, among other features. 
>(It's also good at identifying the denominations on printed money.)
>
>James Gashel, vice president of business development for KNFB Reading 
>Technologies, is also a user of the device. "I don't use it to read 
>books," he says, "but I use it for the daily mail, business cards, and 
>brochures. I was at a Catholic men's retreat over the weekend, and I 
>used it to read the schedule."
>
>Gashel says there are about 1.3 million blind people in the United 
>States; since February, the company has sold "thousands" of the 
>readers, he says. But the population of dyslexics is about three times 
>larger. A new version of the mobile phone reader will soon be available 
>that is targeted to them. "These are people who can see print, but have 
>difficulty tracking from word to word," Gashel says. "So this new 
>version of the software helps people whose problem is that they get 
>lost in a series of words on a page."
>
>Still more intriguing is how the phone might assist other users. A 
>prototype in Kurzweil's lab is able to photograph a document in any of 
>seven different languages and translate it into English, Kurzweil says 
>he has demonstrated it in public appearances, taking a photo of text in 
>French and having the phone read it in English. It sounds a bit like 
>Douglas Adams's fictional Babel fish - a universal translator.
>
>"We call it 'snap and translate,' " he says. How soon will it be 
>available? "Two or three years," says Kurzweil, adding that he is 
>talking to cellphone manufacturers. "We also have a prototype of speech 
>to speech translation, where you can speak in one language and have it 
>come out in another," he says. "Right now, that requires a bit more 
>computation than a cellphone can support," though he notes that phones 
>are getting more powerful each year.
>
>As it turned out, Smith didn't really need to have his phone read the 
>menu to him last month at the Parish Cafe. He had been to the 
>restaurant several years ago and remembered eating a tasty steak 
>sandwich. So that's what he ordered, and we spent the meal talking 
>about his experiences running the Boston Marathon and his tandem 
>cycling hobby. He says he uses the reader several times a day, about 
>equally at home and at work. He told me he's amazed by what the KNBF 
>software can do - "it's a portable eye, essentially" - but that he's 
>hoping the cost will come down, so more blind and visually impaired 
>people can afford it. "The cost is prohibitive," he says.
>
>Gashel says, "I think the cost of the phone will come down as the 
>product expands in terms of who it can reach. The bigger the customer 
>base, the more we can bring the price down." Still, he says, $2,100 
>isn't that expensive when it comes to technology for the blind. He says 
>he recently purchased a personal digital assistant that can render 
>phone numbers and appointments in Braille, for $4,500, and also paid 
>$5,500 for a flat- screen TV. "And I can't even see it," he quips. "But 
>the people who come to my house seem to like it."
>
>Scott Kirsner can be reached at kirsner at pobox.com.



   Best Regards:
   David Wright
Email: dwrigh6 at gmail.com
Mobile: (512)203-2474
Webpage: http://www.knfbreader.com
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