Source: Braille monitor, January 2010.
A New Mobile Handheld Device from Intel that Transforms Printed Text to
Spoken Word
by Lindsay Paul
**********
From the Editor: Lindsay Paul, senior associate with Burson
Marsteller Healthcare Practice, the public relations firm managing the
release of the Intel Reader®, has asked us to print the following
announcement. Here it is:
**********
Intel recently announced the launch of the Intel Reader, a mobile
handheld device designed to help people gain more freedom and independence,
enjoy greater flexibility, and increase productivity by providing
convenient and versatile access to a variety of printed materials.
The Intel Reader, which is about the size of a paperback book,
converts printed text to digital text, and then reads it aloud to the user.
Its unique design combines a high-resolution camera with the power of an
Intel® Atom processor, allowing users to point, shoot, and listen to
printed text. The Intel Reader will be available in the United States
through select resellers, including CTL, Don Johnston Incorporated, GTSI,
Howard Technology Solutions, and HumanWare.
When the Intel Reader is used together with the Intel® Portable
Capture Station, large amounts of text, such as a chapter or an entire
book, can be easily gathered for reading later. Users will have convenient
and flexible access to a variety of printed materials, helping to increase
their freedom and improve their productivity and efficiency at school,
work, and home.
"The National Federation of the Blind is pleased that Intel has
recognized the need for products that address the reading needs of people
who are blind or have difficulty reading print for other reasons. It is
encouraging that innovative companies continue to drive the advancement of
reading technology, as this continued innovation will enhance access to the
printed word for all Americans," said Dr. Marc Maurer, president of the
National Federation of the Blind.
The Intel Reader can store and play back a wide choice of content,
including MP3, DAISY books, and even text transferred from a PC. It can
also be used to generate audio versions of printed materials, such as MP3s
that play on most digital music players or computers. Users can play back
content with lifelike voices, selecting gender, pitch, and speed to suit
their personal preferences.
"The Intel Digital Health Group's expertise is in finding innovative
technology solutions to improve quality of life," said Louis Burns, vice
president and general manager of Intel's Digital Health Group. "We are
proud to offer the Intel Reader as a tool for people who have trouble
reading standard print so they can more easily access important information
such as reading a job offer letter or even the menu at a restaurant." For
more information about the Intel Reader, visit <www.reader.intel.com>.
Initial Thoughts on the Intel Reader
by Gary Wunder
**********
From the Editor: Almost everyone agrees that Intel's involvement in
bringing its resources to the blindness field is a welcome addition,
potentially enhancing our easy access to the printed word. Because we want
to encourage continued innovation in access technology, we have included
the Intel announcement about its new technology in this issue of the
Braille Monitor.
Several technology-savvy members of the National Federation of the
Blind have participated in early testing of the Intel Reader, and their
initial assessment is that the Intel product may fall short of the
contribution we want from such technology. Gary Wunder, secretary of the
National Federation of the Blind, president of our Missouri affiliate, and
a technology professional in his own right, has been an early tester for
the Intel Reader. In correspondence he has forwarded to Intel and
HumanWare, Gary has acknowledged the potential usefulness of this device in
the lives of blind people while pointing out several fundamental
shortcomings that he believes must be resolved before the Intel Reader will
be equipped to take its place with the best access technology on the
market. We reprint below excerpts from Gary's communications with Intel and
HumanWare. These reflections are by no means complete or formal reviews of
the product, but they do signal concern about the ability of the Intel
Reader to perform competitively at its current stage of development. The
first piece was sent to officials at Intel, and the second was sent to
staff at HumanWare. Some of Gary's observations in the messages are
duplicative, but each has enough unique perspective for us to reprint them
both. Here is what he says:
**********
Memo to Intel
**********
For me print-to-speech technology has opened many doors, but the most
important has been to the public library and books. I'm glad to read an
incoming letter, a work memo, or an agenda prepared too late to come to me
in an accessible form, but books, because of their length, are not
conveniently or economically handled by the human readers I employ or the
pocket-size reader I carry.
My enthusiasm for the Intel Reader, which I will refer to as "reader,"
was that it could shoot a book faster than I could scan it and it seemed to
offer the possibility of handling everything from the smallest paperback to
the largest textbook. This is not so, of course, for the typical eight-and-
a-half-by-eleven-inch flatbed scanner.
The bottom line for measuring the success of any print-to-speech
system is accuracy. Especially is this true for books. I cannot submit to
Bookshare a book of lesser quality than I could deliver with a scanner and
justify my submission by saying it took me less time to prepare. The same
is true of books provided to students whether in the public schools or by
disability offices in colleges and universities. The University of Missouri
scans its textbooks by removing the book's binding, running the pages
through a high-speed scanner and a commercial OCR package, and then
rebinding or discarding the book. Improved speed over this approach cannot
be achieved by the reader, and in any event students will grade the
performance of the service provider based on the material and not how long
it took the provider to prepare it.
Currently the reader market for the blind consists of pocket-sized
machines to PC-based scanner systems. Some of us who are fortunate enough
to have two systems use our scanners for books or large documents and our
portable readers for on-the-go reading. For this reader to succeed in the
group having two devices, it must perform as well as the scanner-PC systems
or become small enough to fit in a shirt pocket and provide multiple
functions as now happens with the knfbReader, which is also a cell phone
providing access to voice, text messaging, and email. If the reader is
excellent, it may capture the market and reduce significantly the demand
for both of the systems mentioned above. For wonderful accuracy and speed,
I might sacrifice the convenience of my shirt pocket. If the unit is as
accurate as my scanner and PC system, I might well regain some of my
physical desktop and reduce the maintenance cost I pay for all of it.
I initially looked at this machine in the same way many families look
at motor vehicles. There are days when we want a fancy sports car for fun
and to show off to our friends, and there are days when we want a truck to
bring home the new furniture we've purchased. If we can't afford both, we
settle for something in between --the family car, which may be a station
wagon, a minivan, or a SUV. It will be classy enough to take into areas
where trucks are not allowed and functional enough that we can use it for
limited hauling. The most important function it will serve is daily getting
us to and from work and taking our family where we need to go. Beyond this
somewhat flawed analogy, we still get back to the question of what place
the reader has in the market. If this isn't the smallest and isn't the most
accurate, it may prove to be too big to displace the cell-phone reader and
too slow and inaccurate to replace desktop systems.
In my week of work with it, it cannot best the accuracy of desktop
systems and does no better than the knfbReader where accuracy is concerned.
The knfbReader is quicker to tell me whether I captured all of the text in
my shot and faster to tell me if a page is blank--a matter of tremendous
significance to a blind person who may have the page wrong side up. With
the Intel Reader I can shoot faster, but, in delivering the first and
subsequent pages of information, it is slower than both.
It is important to differentiate between the feedback you will get
from experienced users who have seen and heavily used current technology
versus what you will get from someone who has never had the pleasure of a
machine reading any printed document to him. To the person with no reader
experience, anything which causes what appears to be a blank piece of paper
to speak is miraculous. I observed this in watching testers of the
knfbReader, who confidently asserted that this was the fastest, most
accurate reading machine ever made for the blind. This was indeed their
strongly held opinion, but it was not an informed opinion, and
knowledgeable purchasers of blindness technology will in the end make up
their minds about the relative merits of products based primarily on
accuracy.
Given this machine's speed of image acquisition, it could be a major
player if recognition were improved. If accuracy cannot be made to exceed
the cell phone devices and match the scanner PC systems, it is hard for me
to see a market. There is a lot of merit in the idea of a portable device
for on-the-go reading and a docking station for large document reading. The
question is whether this technology can marry the advantages of both by
delivering a quality audio presentation from print.
I am honored to have been a part of the group chosen to test this
machine, and, while I would not purchase it at this point, there are many
things I admire about it, and I hope enough development occurs that it will
live up to the potential which seems to exist in a quality capture station,
a good processor, and all of the thought which has gone into a well-
designed unit.
**********
Memo to HumanWare
**********
This unit is exciting because it employs the concept of a portable
reader that can be made into a real workhorse when paired with the capture
station. It is comfortable to hold, its buttons are very discernible, and
the layout of the unit is logical and easy to understand. Its battery life
is good, and its recharge time quite acceptable. Capturing images is easy
using it as a handheld unit and most especially using the capture station.
Regardless of how unscientific or provable the term, the machine is just
cool.
All of this being true, the bottom line for me is that, in its current
stage of development, this reader fills no niche in my life. My needs focus
on reading the mail; reading work documents handed out too late to be
scanned before meetings; and, my true joy, going to the library to get
books I would not otherwise be able to read. This unit cannot replace the
reading device I carry in my pocket. It is faster to shoot multiple pages
but not faster to recognize or read the captured material. Although its
camera and processor should make it more accurate than my knfbReader, I do
not find it so. The reader cannot replace the K1000 on my desk because it
is far less accurate. When it comes to books, accuracy is far more
important than is the speed in acquiring an image. With the utmost respect
and absolutely no sarcasm intended, I have to say that, even if this unit
were given as a reward for testing, in good conscience I'd have to send it
back because I don't know where I'd use it.
None of what I've said has anything to do with my hope for what the
reader can become, my appreciation for the design concept of a portable
unit coupled with a text-capture station, and the power and flexibility of
the processor being used. Neither does it mean I am unwilling to help in
ongoing testing so that the resulting unit is so fast and accurate that it
is worth the extra size to carry around, and its speed of image acquisition
and accuracy let me free up some of my physical desktop and avoid the
yearly maintenance cost of updating other print-to-speech programs.
I see all kinds of potential, but most of it at this point is
theoretical. This unit simply is not comparable to other commercially
available OCR products both in and outside the blindness field, and I hope
Intel and HumanWare realize that blind people with existing technology will
not replace or supplement what they have with this unit. Further, blind
people who have not yet enjoyed the blessing of turning print into the
spoken word deserve much better recognition than you can offer here.
Intel must first bring better OCR to the product. When taking a shot,
blind people should know rather quickly whether the page appears to be
blank, whether it appears text is cut off, and what part of the page is
missing. If possible, the engine should provide an assessment of the
confidence level the engine has assigned to the page. The latter suggestion
may be beyond the capability of the processor, but certainly the first two
are not. Optionally the orientation of the page should also be announced
because sometimes I'm trying to arrange papers for the review of others,
and they demand more from me than sheets that are upside down.
It would be desirable if the unit could shoot pages while reading
previously processed material. Stated differently, I'd like to be listening
to a book while I continue to photograph it. If processor speed will not
allow for this parallel activity, the unit should at least provide the
feedback about each page listed above.
As important as these features are to the unit, the central issue is
still accuracy, and, unless we have it, all the bells and whistles I might
suggest still won't sell or serve the competitive blind person who wants
and needs to read print. The last sentence is the most important one I wish
to convey in this note. I just talked with a staff member at Intel who has
looked at my images and resulting text and says she believes the reader is
being used properly and the quality is simply what the unit, in conjunction
with the capture station, can now produce.
Last, and certainly most subjective, is the issue of the text-to-
speech being used. My perspective is that there are some very responsive
engines such as Eloquence, DoubleTalk, and Keynote Gold which no one would
mistake for human speech but which, to the trained ear, become quite
comfortable and provide rapid and very understandable output. At the other
end of the spectrum are some very human sounding text-to-speech programs
which aren't nearly as fast or responsive but are preferable for the
reading of material intended primarily for enjoyment. My take on the Intel
Reader is that its speech falls somewhere in the middle, but this is not a
compromise which serves anyone. The current speech software has the
disadvantage that it does not really sound human, nor is it rapid or
responsive. It represents an attempt to provide more than the robotic
speech of the synthetic speech most of us use on personal computers but
falls far short of speech offerings from ScanSoft, AT&T, Neo-Speech, or L
and H. I understand the appeal in marketing for a system which does not
sound like a machine, but I think having an option which is fast and
responsive will attract serious users of text-to-speech technology.
Continuing to search for something more human-sounding will also be helpful
if the processor will allow for it; it will add not only to initial appeal
but to reading for enjoyment which this unit may eventually provide.
I know I could have returned my machine without a response, but I'd
like to see this machine mature and earn a place in the homes and
workplaces of blind people. Our reading needs are not so well met that
there is no place for another unit, but any new offering should at least
meet and preferably exceed what is currently available. If the unit could
do what it has the potential to do, the reader is something I'd be a fool
to pass up. I believe HumanWare and Intel can make this machine become
something really useful to blind people, and I stand ready to help with
future testing if this is desired.
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