[Nfbf-l] Device From Israeli Start-Up Gives the Visually Impaired a Way to Read

[MisterAdvocate at aol.com]

Subj: Device From Israeli  Start-Up Gives the Visually Impaired a Way to 
Read


 

 
Interesting! 
Dalene  Renfroe, M.Ed., COMS 
VIST  Coordinator 
Services  for Visually Impaired Veterans 
Device  From Israeli Start-Up Gives the Visually Impaired a Way to  Read
By  _JOHN  MARKOFF_ 
(http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/john_markoff/index.html) 
Published:  June 3, 2013 
JERUSALEM  — Liat Negrin, an Israeli who has been visually impaired since 
childhood,  walked into a grocery store here recently, picked up a can of 
vegetables and  easily read its label using a simple and unobtrusive camera 
attached to her  glasses.  
_Enlarge This  Image_ 
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Orcam
Ms.  Negrin, who has coloboma, a birth defect that perforates a structure 
of the  eye and afflicts about 1 in 10,000 people, is an employee at OrCam, 
an  Israeli start-up that has developed a camera-based system intended to 
give  the visually impaired the ability to both “read” easily and move freely. 
  
Until  now reading aids for the visually impaired and the blind have been  
cumbersome devices that recognize text in restricted environments, or, more  
recently, have been software applications on smartphones that have limited  
capabilities.  
In  contrast, the OrCam device is a small camera worn in the style of 
Google  Glass, connected by a thin cable to a portable computer designed to fit 
in  the wearer’s pocket. The system clips on to the wearer’s glasses with a  
small magnet and uses a bone-conduction speaker to offer clear speech as it 
 reads aloud the words or object pointed to by the user.   
The  system is designed to both recognize and speak “text in the wild,” a 
term  used to describe newspaper articles as well as bus numbers, and 
objects as  diverse as landmarks, traffic lights and the faces of friends.   
It  currently recognizes English-language text and beginning this week will 
be  sold through the _company’s Web  site_ (http://www.orcam.com/)  for 
$2,500, about the cost of a midrange hearing aid. It is  the only product, so 
far, of the privately held company, which is part of  the high-tech boom in 
Israel.  
The  device is quite different from other technology that has been 
developed to  give some vision to people who are blind, like the _artificial retina_ 
(http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/15/health/fda-approves-technology-to-give-li
mited-vision-to-blind-people.html)  system called Argus II,  made by Second 
Sight Medical Products. That system, which was approved by  the Food and 
Drug Administration in February, allows visual signals to  bypass a damaged 
retina and be transmitted to the brain.   




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