Intel's Reader, a boon for the blind?
Can't read things? Photograph them with an Intel Reader and it will read them back to you. It could be a boon for people with limited vision or dyslexia
You probably don't own any Intel products, as distinct from products that contain Intel chips. But one of the devices that the company has designed and manufactures is the Intel Reader, which is a product of the Intel Health division. It's a fattish Atom-powered portable that converts print into large print and, if you want, reads it aloud. It's aimed at people who find reading difficult because of impaired eyesight or dyslexia, for example.
The Intel Reader needs to be portable so that you can carry it around. When you run into something you can't read, you use the Reader's built in camera to photograph it -- it might be a restaurant menu, a ticket, a notice, or the instructions on a bottle of pills. It's not simply an electronic book system, though it can be used to read ebooks including (hip hip hooray) books in the Daisy (Digital Accessible Information System) format used by the RNIB.
The Intel Reader isn't so much a consumer electronics device as a health product with a limited market (people with poor vision, the blind, the dyslexic), and that's reflected in the £999 price at Amazon.co.uk. It could also find users in schools and libraries, and Intel is showing the Reader at this week's BETT educational technology exhibition at Olympia in London (13 - 16 January 2010).
Further information and a video short available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog
Source: The Guardian online