Zoom+Reader+-+Assistive+Technology

ZoomReader is an application that has been created for the iPhone, and iPad by Ai Squared. The features of ZoomReader is that it can zoom in on text for visually impaired people, but it can also read the text out loud.

There are other text to speech applications, but ZoomReader is different because it can convert text from nearly any text. This includes everyday items such as boxes, bottles or anything else that has text on it. The way that the application works, is that the user points the camera at the text, and the application will automatically focus the camera. The user then takes a picture, and can also zoom in on the text if needed. The application then converts the text from the picture, into a plain text format. The company that created this application, Ai Squared, claims that this application can have up to 98% accuracy.

The reason that I feel that it is a important resource, is that it can drastically help the vision impaired. The user can just used the zoom feature to read the text. If the text is still to blurry, the user can then have it read out to them, and the sentences are highlighted on the phone.

Here is a short video of how the ZoomReader works: [] === Assistive Technology Blog. (2011). //ZoomReader – Speech to Text App for iPhone/iOS//. Retrieved 24 July 2011, from [] ===
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