Assistive Technology for Information Access (Visual Impairments) - Computers & Mobile SCREEN READERS AND OCR (SCAN AND READ)

Information Access for VI in Computers and Mobiles Computers – Desktop and Notebook Desktop Computers remain stationary, on a desk or table. Laptop / Notebook Computers are lightweight and easily carried around Which suits best, Discuss?

Information Access for VI in Computers and Mobiles Computers – Desktop and Notebook Desktop offer more memory, cost less, faster processing speed, stable, large monitor options, keyboards, mouse handling, support external devices like DVD Drives and USB devices, Operating Systems and others.. Laptop / Notebook offer easy handling, cost higher, limited external devices support, smaller keyboard, touchpad mouse, Operating Systems and others..

Information Access for VI in Computers and Mobiles Mobiles – Keyboard and Touch Oriented Keyboard offer easy to operate, spatial, tactile information, long usage hours, limited applications and scalability Touch offer more flexibility, applications, information access, social networking, scalable, tough to orient, less usage hours More to be Discussed?

Information Access for VI in Computers and Mobiles Selection Criteria and Factors Impairment Conditions – Low Vision or Totally Blind, Deaf Blind or associated conditions Environment – School, Higher Education, Daily Life, Workplace Tasks – Task requirements and level (easy and advanced) may depend on the environment Tools – Availability, Affordability, Reliability, Usability

Information Access for VI in Computers and Mobiles Screen Readers Software programs that allow persons with visual impairments or learning disabilities to read the text that is displayed on the computer screen with a speech synthesizer or braille display. A screen reader is the interface between the computer's operating system, its applications, and the user.

Information Access for VI in Computers and Mobiles Screen Readers – Computers Commonly used Job Access With Speech (JAWS) from Freedom Scientific Non Visual Desktop Access (NVDA) from NVAccess.org Window-Eyes from GW Micro Dolphin Supernova by Dolphin System Access from Serotek ZoomText Magnifier/Reader from AiSquared VoiceOver from Apple Orca from GENOME Linux group Narrator from Microsoft

Information Access for VI in Computers and Mobiles Screen Readers – Mobiles / Tablets Commonly used Talks from Nuance Communications – Symbion OS Mobile Speak from Code Factory – Symbion OS TalkBack from Google – Android OS VoiceOver from Apple – iOS PocketHal from Dolphin - Windows For more info

Information Access for VI in Computers and Mobiles Text to Speech Synthesis (TTS) Software program that converts normal language text into speech. The quality of a speech synthesizer is judged by its similarity to the human voice and by its ability to be understood clearly.

Information Access for VI in Computers and Mobiles Text to Speech Synthesis (TTS) The front-end of TTS it converts raw text containing symbols like numbers and abbreviations into the equivalent of written- out words. This process is often called text normalization, pre- processing, or tokenization. Next, assigns phonetic transcriptions to each word, and divides and marks the text into prosodic units, like phrases, clauses, and sentences. The process of assigning phonetic transcriptions to words is called text-to-phoneme or grapheme-to-phoneme conversion.

Information Access for VI in Computers and Mobiles Text to Speech Synthesis (TTS) Common TTS are eSpeak Nuance Festival Flight Acapala Voice Synthesizers

Information Access for VI in Computers and Mobiles Text to Braille Facility by Screen Readers Screen readers gathers the content of the screen from the operating system or an application, converts it into braille characters and sends it to the Braille display when they are connected to the computer or mobile. A Refreshable braille display consisting of a row of electromechanical character cells, each of which can raise or lower a combination of six (or in some cases, eight) round- tipped plastic pins as per the converted text sent to it.

Information Access for VI in Computers and Mobiles Scanning and Reading Scanning and reading technology works with a scanner mechanism to scan paper documents into a computer. Then, then OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software will then translate it into digital format. The next process would be the TTS (Text To Speech) synthesizer of the Screen reader to read for editing. Scanning and Reading Technology is available as Software solutions as well as Independent Tools

Information Access for VI in Computers and Mobiles OCR (Optical Character Recognition) OCR is a technology to convert the scanned printed text, into machine-encoded digital text. Further to which the text to be electronically edited, searched, stored and used in other processes like Text To Speech In OCR, one glyph or character in the image format is taken at a time matched by an algorithm with the font characters and replaced to form a text, phrase or sentence. Further, OCR accuracy is enhanced by checking the words with a dictionary of available words for character segmentation.

Information Access for VI in Computers and Mobiles Commonly used OCR Software with Screen Readers Kurzweil Open Book Easy Converter ReadIt Abbyy Fine Reader Free OCR IndSenz More Info at:

Information Access for VI in Computers and Mobiles Scanning and Reading Tools In Scanning and reading tools, the whole process of scanning by a scanner, OCR to convert the image into text and TTS to convert the text to sound are integrated. The tools acts as an independent device by itself with a components of a computer with camera replacing a scanner

Information Access for VI in Computers and Mobiles Commonly used Scanning and Reading Tools SARA ReadEasy Move LexCam ClearReader Blaze Eye Pal Solo / Ace

Queries and Discussion