ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY BLOG | INVENTIONS FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES

I have had the Intel Reader for about a week now and it is helping me a lot. I used it to study and read the newspaper. The Intel Reader is very easy to use and has  very large buttons. The software is very simple and there is the option to read the Intel's menu items aloud for people who can't see or read the items. In order to read a document with the Intel Reader you must take a picture of the document and then the Intel Reader recognizes the text in the document. The Intel Reader does take longer than I expected to recognize the document. For a one page document the scan time was about one minute. Also, the read makes a few more recognition mistakes than Kurzweil, but its accuracy is still very good. Unfortunately, the Intel Reader doesn't have many additional features. Some features that I wish were included are a built in dictionary and the option to highlight text. The Reader comes with two computerized voices that are above average quality. The Intel Reader is still a great tool for reading documents quickly. Also, for completing worksheets and assessments Kurzweil is a better tool because of Kurzweil's fill in the blank features and other annotation options. The Intel Reader helped me a lot while reviewing for tests. If I need to read section of handouts in my notebook the Intel Reader worked great. The Reader is a great tool for quickly accessing text but I wish Intel had included more features. I would recommend the Intel Reader for people who struggle to read or can not see the text on the page. Keep in mind that the Intel Reader does not allow for any annotation.

E-readers have become very popular for main stream consumers but do they help people with print disabilities? People with print disabilities can benefit from electronic text but only if it is in the right format. The Nook does not have text-to-speech. This means that Nook is no better than a paper back for people with print disabilities. The Kindle does offer a text-to-speech option but many publishers choose to disable this function. In contrast the iPad has a built in feature called VoiceOver which reads any text on screen aloud, including text in the iBooks app. Unfortunately the voice is not great quality but you are able to change the specking rate.