Intel has introduced a new digital book reader designed for the blind. People with low vision, blindness or dyslexia can access millions of printed materials with the help of a digital book reader. This mobile Intel digital book reader is developed by Intel’s digital health group. It is built on Intel’s atom processor and runs on Moblin operating system. The digital book reader uses a camera to take pictures of the text and coverts them to voice signals and read it aloud.
The pictures taken are translated into ASCII text and then read aloud with the help of a computer. The device uses the optical character recognition technology for this purpose. The digital book reader comes with a Braille notation to help users identify the manuals and tutorial CD. The device displays the characters recognized through camera on a four inch colour display screen. The high resolution built in camera enables the easy capture of the printed text materials. With the aid of a digital book reader millions of books can be read by visually impaired individuals all over the world.
The high resolution built in camera enables the easy capture of the printed text materials. The camera which is of 5 megapixels combines the application of a Linux based optical character recognition software which translates text to voice. The digital book reader has a storage capacity of 2 GB and can store up to 600 snapshots at a time. The book reader is priced reasonable at a best buy of $1,499 and is available with major resellers as Howard technology solutions, CTL and Human Ware. With such user friendly features, Intel’s digital book reader can be the greatest companion for a blind person ever.