Optical Character Recognition (OCR) uses a camera or scanner to recognize printed text. Both Kurzweil and the Intel Reader use OCR in order to read documents. Using an Android phone or an iPhone you can take a picture of text and have an app recognize it. Two of these app are
Page Scanner and
DocScanner. DocScanner has an Android version as well. The apps sell for $5.99 and $4.99 respectively. DocScanner has a more polished user interface than Page Scanner. Both apps can create plain text files and PDFs from an image. Once the document is in plain text format, VoiceOver, which is built into the iPhone can read it back to you. DocScanner has the option to save your document in dropbox. Their are also many other OCR apps for iPhone and Android. These apps are great if you are on the go and need to read a document quickly. These app are available on iTunes and DocScanner is available on Android Market.
Update:
Zoom reader is an other OCR app for iPhone that deserves consideration.
Optical Character Recognition (OCR) uses a camera or scanner to recognize printed text. Both Kurzweil and the Intel Reader use OCR in order to read documents. Using an Android phone or an iPhone you can take a picture of text and have an app recognize it. Two of these app are Page Scanner and DocScanner. DocScanner has an Android version as well. The apps sell for $5.99 and $4.99 respectively. DocScanner has a more polished user interface than Page Scanner. Both apps can create plain text files and PDFs from an image. Once the document is in plain text format, VoiceOver, which is built into the iPhone can read it back to you. DocScanner has the option to save your document in dropbox. Their are also many other OCR apps for iPhone and Android. These apps are great if you are on the go and need to read a document quickly. These app are available on iTunes and DocScanner is available on Android Market.