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: viphone@googlegroups.com <viphone@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Cook,
Steve
Sent: Tuesday, May 7, 2019 6:51 AM
To: viphone@googlegroups.com
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.