prizmo app that reads picture of document to you

In addition, the system could produce non-visual directions to help the blind user re-orient or move the camera so as to take a better picture of the document.

In a similar fashion, Prizmo 2 and KNFB Reader 3 analyze the stream of images acquired by the camera in real time, to detect whether all four edges of the document are visible. For example, Text Detective 1 lets the user move the smartphone in front of the document, while the camera continuously takes images at a relatively high rate each image is analyzed by a fast text spotting algorithm, and as soon as the presence of readable text is detected, the image is sent on to OCR processing.

Some OCR apps provide accessibility tools that facilitate acquisition of well-framed, OCR-readable images by blind people. Clearly, this problem is much more acute for blind persons, who are unable to see the smartphone’s screen. For example, banking apps that allow for check deposit using the smartphone camera normally provide indications through visual means (e.g., showing fiducials on the smartphone’s screen) that help the user correctly frame the check. In fact, even sighted people sometimes have problems correctly framing a document with a camera. Lacking visual feedback, these situations may occur quite commonly, reducing the usability of this otherwise tremendously useful tool. Similarly, the smartphone may be mistakenly held sideways with respect to the document, or oriented at the wrong angle. For example, a blind user of these apps may take pictures that are too far from the document, resulting in poor resolution, or too close, in which case the text may be cropped by the camera’s viewport. This is something that can be difficult to obtain without sight. This is because OCR requires a well-framed image of text at good resolution to produce meaningful results. Yet, a mobile OCR system that works perfectly for sighted people may be difficult to use by a blind individual. The processing power of modern smartphones, the excellent imaging characteristics and high resolution of smartphone cameras, and the maturity of OCR algorithms, enable mobile OCR reading at a quality that is becoming comparable to that of traditional flatbed scanners. These apps enable on-the-go access to printed documents such as restaurant menus, bills, signs on a door or on a wall, class handouts, etc. A number of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) mobile phone apps specifically designed for blind users have recently appeared on the market.

Prizmo app that reads picture of document to you