Kenny, After you've chosen to keep a Voice Dream Scanner image, you have options to either clear or save it. If you execute the Save button, you're given a stack of 4 menu options above the home button the last of which is Copy Text. That should enable you to get the information to your social media contacts.
Alan Lemly -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Kenny Sent: Wednesday, May 08, 2019 2:37 AM To: [email protected]; Sieghard Weitzel Subject: Re: Voice Dream Scanner Fantastic suggestion. I definitely hope such a feature can be added. Also is there an option to have last read content copied to clipboard? Then using a app for syncing iPhone clipboard to PC would make it easier for me to post interesting articles to my social media contacts. On 5/7/2019 12:23 PM, Sieghard Weitzel wrote: > I think it would also be great if Voice Dream Scanner would announce if a > page is right side up, upside down or sideways as Openbook does. I sometimes > would find it quite useful to know if I am holding the page correctly as a > sighted person would read it, for example, I may want to staple several pages > together. This would be equally as useful a feature in Seeing AI and it could > easily be an optional feature you could turn on or off. > > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Cook, > Steve > Sent: Tuesday, May 7, 2019 6:51 AM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Voice Dream Scanner > > The below article is from the May issue of Access World > > Voice Dream Scanner: A New Kind of OCR > > There is a new player in the optical character recognition (OCR) space, and > it comes from an old friend: Winston Chen, the developer of Voice Dream > Reader and Voice Dream Writer, both of which we ve reviewed in past issues of > AccessWorld. In this article we ll start out with a brief conversation with > Chen. Then we ll take a look at the developer s latest offering: Voice Dream > Scanner. Spoiler alert it will probably be the best $5.99 you ll ever spend > on a text recognition app! > > AccessWorld readers who use their phones to audibly read e-Pub books, PDFs or > Bookshare titles are likely already familiar with Voice Dream Reader. It > works so well with VoiceOver and TalkBack, it s hard to believe it wasn t > developed specifically for the access market. But according to Chen, I just > wanted to build a pocket reader I could use to store all my books and files > so I could listen to them on the go. No one was more surprised than me when I > began receiving feedback from dyslexic and blind users describing how helpful > Voice Dream Reader was for their needs and making some simple suggestions to > improve the app s accessibility. > > Chen s second offering, Voice Dream Writer, was also directed at the > mainstream market. Sometimes it s easier to proofread your document by > listening to it instead of simply rereading the text, says Chen. At the > time, Apple s VoiceOver cut and paste features and other block text > manipulation capabilities were,shall we say, not quite what they are today? > The innovative way Chen handled these functions made Voice Dream Writer > equally useful to users with visual impairments. > > Reinventing the OCR Engine > > I ve been wanting to add OCR to Voice Dream Reader for a few years now, > says Chen. It would be useful for reading protected PDF s and handouts and > memos from school and work. > > The hurdle Chen kept encountering was finding a useable OCR engine. There > are some free, open source engines, but they don t work well enough for my > purposes, he says. The ones that do work well are quite expensive, either > as a one-time license purchase with each app sold or with ongoing > pay-by-the-use options. Either of these would have raised the price I have to > charge too much for my value proposition. > > Last year, however, Chen began experimenting with Apple s artificial > intelligence (AI), called Vision Framework, that s built into the latest iOS > versions, along with Google s Tesseract, TensorFlow Lite, and ML Kit. > > Instead of using a single standard OCR engine, I combined the best aspects > of each of these freely available tools, and I was pleasantly surprised by > the results. > > Instead of making OCR a Voice Dream Reader feature, Chen decided to > incorporate his discovery into a separate app called Voice Dream Scanner. I > considered turning it into an in-app purchase, only there are a lot of > schools that use Reader and they aren t allowed to make in-app purchases, he > says. As to why he didn t simply make it a new Reader feature, he smiles, I > do have a family to feed. > > Chen has been careful to integrate the new Voice Dream Scanner functionality > into VD Reader, however. For example, if you load a protected PDF file into > the app and open it, the Documents tab now offers a recognition feature. You > can now also add to your Voice Dream Reader Library not only from Dropbox, > Google Drive, and other sources, including Bookshare, but using your device s > camera as well. > > To take advantage of this integration you ll need both Voice Dream Reader and > Voice Dream Scanner. Both can be purchased from the iOS App Store. VD Reader > is also available for Android, but currently VD Scanner is iOS only. > > Of course you don t have to have VD Reader to enjoy the benefits of the new > Voice Dream Scanner. > > A Voice Dream Scanner Snapshot > > The app installs quickly and easily, and displays with the icon name Scanner > on your iOS device. Aim the camera toward a page of text. The app displays a > real-time video image preview which is also the Capture Image button. > Double tap this button, the camera clicks, and the image is converted to text > almost immediately. You are placed on the Play button, give a quick double > tap and the text is spoken using either a purchased VD Reader voice or your > chosen iOS voice. Note: You can instruct Scanner to speak recognized text > automatically in the Settings Menu. > > From the very first beta version of this app I tested, I was amazed by the > speed and accuracy of the recognition. The app is amazingly forgiving as far > as camera position and lighting. Envelopes read the return addresses, > postmarks and addresses. Entire pages of text voiced without a single > mistake. Scanner even did an excellent job with a bag of potato chips, even > after it was crumpled and uncrumpled several times. Despite the fact there is > no OCR engine to download, and the recognition is done locally, a network > connection is not required. I used the app with equal success even with > Airplane mode turned on. > > After each scan you are offered the choice to swipe left once to reach the > Discard button, twice to reach the Save button. Note: the VoiceOver > two-finger scrub gesture also deletes the current text. > > Scanner does not save your work automatically. You have the choice to save it > as a text file, a PDF, or to send it directly to Voice Dream Reader. You > probably wouldn t send a single page to Reader, but the app comes with a > batch mode. Use this mode to scan several pages at once and then save them > together: perfect for that 10-page print report your boss dropped on your > desk, or maybe the short story a creative writing classmate passed out for > review. > > Other Scanner features of interest to those with visual impairments are edge > detection and a beta version of auto capture. > > Edge detection plays a tone that grows increasingly steady until all four > edges are visible, at which time it becomes a solid tone. Auto-capture does > just that, but since the AI currently detects any number of squares where > there is no text this feature is only available in beta. However, if you're > using a scanner stand it will move along quite nicely, nearly as fast as you > can rearrange the pages. > > You can also import an image to be recognized. Unfortunately, as of now, this > feature is limited to pictures in your photo library. There is currently no > way to send an e-mail or file image to Scanner. Look for this to change in an > upcoming version. > > The benefits of Voice Dream Scanner are by no means limited to the blindness > community. Chen developed the app to be used as a pocket player for documents > and other printed material he wishes to scan and keep. Low vision users can > do the same, then use either iOS magnification or another text-magnification > app to review documents. It doesn t matter in which direction the material is > scanned. Even upside-down documents are saved right-side up. Performance is > improved by the Image Enhancement feature, which attempts to locate the > edges of scanned documents and save them more or less as pages. > > The Bottom Line > > I never thought I d see the day when I would move KNFB-Reader off my iPhone s > Home screen. Microsoft s Seeing AI gave it a good run for its money and until > now I kept them both on my Home screen. But I have now moved KNFB-Reader to a > back screen and given that honored spot to Voice Dream Scanner. > > Most of my phone scanning is done when I sort through the mail. Seeing AI s > Short Text feature does a decent job helping me sort out which envelopes to > keep and which to toss into my hardware recycle bin. But Scanner is just as > accurate as any OCR-engine based app, and so quick, the confirmation > announcement of the Play button often voices after the scanned document has > begun to read. > > This is the initial release. Chen himself says there is still work to be > done. Column recognition is not yet what I hope it will be, he says. I d > also like to improve auto-capture and maybe offer users the choice to use the > volume buttons to initiate a scan. > > Stay tuned. > -- The following information is important for all members of the V iPhone list. If you have any questions or concerns about the running of this list, or if you feel that a member's post is inappropriate, please contact the owners or moderators directly rather than posting on the list itself. Your V iPhone list moderator is Mark Taylor. Mark can be reached at: [email protected]. Your list owner is Cara Quinn - you can reach Cara at [email protected] The archives for this list can be searched at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "VIPhone" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/viphone. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/viphone/24cb2ab3-9084-63be-3dca-4c30ecc876a1%40gmail.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- The following information is important for all members of the V iPhone list. If you have any questions or concerns about the running of this list, or if you feel that a member's post is inappropriate, please contact the owners or moderators directly rather than posting on the list itself. Your V iPhone list moderator is Mark Taylor. Mark can be reached at: [email protected]. Your list owner is Cara Quinn - you can reach Cara at [email protected] The archives for this list can be searched at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "VIPhone" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/viphone. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/viphone/005f01d505aa%2465874240%243095c6c0%24%40gmail.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
