Intel Reader turns street signs into spoken words

Many of us take our ability to read signs, books, magazines, menus and instruction manuals for granted, but for an estimated 55 million people in the U.S. alone who have to contend with vision impairment, dyslexia or other specific learning disabilities, connecting with the world through text is not so simple. That’s a big number – almost the the population of UK – and now Intel has announced a solution for this market in the form of new book-sized device that’s not your average e-reader. The Intel Reader takes photos of text, converts the words to digital format and then reads them out loud.

Running on an Intel® Atom™ processor, the handheld Reader uses an in-built camera to capture printed material and translate it to digital format and then read it aloud with either a male or female voice. The menus are also audible, text size can be increased as needed or you can look at the pictures while the text is being read back.

The voice speed can also be slowed down or sped up to as fast as 250 words per minute. This sounds like it would be hard to handle, but power users accustomed to the device actually find this more comfortable.

Read more . . .

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Tags: dyslexia, handheld reader, Intel reader, specific learning disabilities, vision impairment

This entry was posted on Friday, November 13th, 2009 at 9:39 am and is filed under Innovation, gizmag. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.