Hi,
I installed Office Lens on my phone quite some time ago but never really paid
much attention to it until I read the information about it in Tidbits. At first
I wasn't thrilled about having to set up a Microsoft account as it was kind of
a pain in the neck to do, but once that was done everything went smoothly. I
have several students who want a scanning app but can't afford KNFB Reader's
hefty price tag, so I showed Office Lens to them and they were favorably
impressed. At first I scanned a single-page document and exported it into
Immersive Reader and let Immersive Reader play it back. Frankly, the defaukt
voice in Immersive Reader sounded a little garbled to my ears and I found that
reading the document with VoiceOver while in Immersive Reader was cleaner and
crisper. Though I didn't test this, I would imagine that I'd be able to use the
VO rotor to navigate by character, word, line and so on and I doubt that
Immersive Reader's playback would let me do that.
Yesterday afternoon I did a second demo for a couple of students and that time
I scanned a multiple-page document. To do that, you do the first page, then
after the image is processed, you tap the Camera button, take your next shot,
let Office Lens process the second picture, then repeat that procedure until
all your pages have been scanned and processed. Tap Save All, then all of your
document images are presumably merged and available as a single document which
can be exported to whatever choices are available. Again, I dumped them into
Immersive Reader and let VO read. The results were clean as a whistle and
reading was seamless. Later on I talked with one of my coworkers who also uses
Office Lens and he agrees with me that it's a very good app and you sure can't
beat the price. Granted it's not as simple to use as KNFB Reader and it's
certainly easier to use than Prizmo, so for me, it's a keeper.
I have a question for the person who mentioned that Office Lens preserves or at
least approximates the document formatting. In the past, I've found that
PC-based packages like Open Book and Kurzweil 1000 will "mangle" forms of
various sorts, absolutely destroying their formatting and making them unusable
for anything except determining what information is asked for in the form. Is
it possible to scan something like a job application, then export it into Word
so that a blind person could then fill it out independently on a computer,
print it out and submit it? It would be fabulous if such a scenario is possible.
Tom
Sent from my iPhone 7
> On Apr 20, 2017, at 10:02 PM, Marie <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Glad to hear you are having the same experience I have had. The price is
> unbeatable and every software or OS in the world collects information about
> how we use our devices so why the big to-do about Microsoft? It is a darn
> sight better than paying $99 for KNFB Reader in my opinion.
> Marie
>
>
> From: Alan Lemly
> Sent: Thursday, April 20, 2017 8:51 PM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: RE: Office Lens, New App
>
> Marie,
>
> I have to agree with you. I had great success with Office Lens scanning a
> two-page homeowners association minutes document. Granted, the document
> contained print with a larger font but I liked the app's ability to scan it,
> convert every letter correctly, format it with a similar appearance as the
> original, and save it as a Word docx file to Dropbox. I did put the camera
> mode on document and those using the app should be aware you can pick from
> among business card, photo, document, and white board modes by a single
> finger swipe up and down on the camera mode button. Also, the app was good
> about indicating left and right needed movement when positioning my camera
> before taking the picture. I already have a Microsoft account set up in my
> iPhone 7 so I wasn't presented with anything having to do with that when
> using the app. And I was presented with a screen allowing me to save it from
> Word where I opened it directly to the desired folder in Dropbox. It was very
> slick and well done even if not as quick as KNFB Reader. You absolutely can't
> beat the free price and if you want to capture a document on your phone that
> looks like the original, this is the app for that. And I'm not worried about
> Microsoft getting access to my business any more than those who are Office
> 365 users should be.
>
> Alan Lemly
>
> From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of
> Marie
> Sent: Thursday, April 20, 2017 4:01 PM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: Office Lens, New App
>
> I am amazed that three of you say you did not find this app useful. I just
> downloaded it today and am thrilled with what it does and how easy it was to
> get started. Strange that our experience would be so different.
> Marie
>
>
> From: Richard Turner
> Sent: Thursday, April 20, 2017 1:44 PM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: RE: Office Lens, New App
>
> I also tried this app and did not find it very good at all.
> For free, the iDentifi app set to Text works great if you don’t mind not be
> able to easily save the file.
>
> Richard
>
>
> From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of
> Sieghard Weitzel
> Sent: Thursday, April 20, 2017 1:08 PM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: RE: Office Lens, New App
>
> I tried it and found it less than intuitive. I heard about it from a Cool
> Blind Tech Podcast after the CSUN where they mentioned how youcould scan a
> business card and it would recognize all the text like names, phone numbers
> and so on and you could easily create a contact entry from that and I could
> not at all figure out how to do this.
>
>
> From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of
> Mike B.
> Sent: Thursday, April 20, 2017 12:30 PM
> To: VIPhone <[email protected]>
> Subject: Office Lens, New App
>
> Hi All,
>
> Got this from Top Tech Tidbits.
> 5. Microsoft Office Lens is a free alternative to the KNFB Reader on the
> iPhone for reading print:
> http://www.rsbc.org.uk/blogs/microsoft-office-lens-review-an-accessible-way-to-read-printed-documents/
>
>
> Take care.
> Mike
> Sent from my iBarstool. Go Dodgers!
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