Does this exist yet?

[Brian Gaff]

it seems that techno types are intent in making everything have an lcd display these days, even toasters, so what is needed is a little gadget that you stick on or hold over the display, which can read the text to you. After all, its now possible to get an app for a mobile that can take a picture of a nuwspaper page and read it to you, so its got to be easier than that surely?

With the aging population with dodgy eyesight sounds like it might be handy. I've seen hand held devices that almost do it, but are seemingly screwed on lcd screens, maybe its the strobing. Brian

[DerbyBorn]

"Brian Gaff" wrote in news:lvs8o8$kni$ [e-mail]:

It should be not more difficult than the readers that scan QR Codes and Bar Codes. Have you sounded out the Inst for the Blind?

[Richard]

Would this be of any use? I have just tried it using my phone camera taking a shot of the laptop display and it works very well! Voxdox is a new free text to speech app, available now for iOS, Android and Kindle. Voxdox will read aloud any form of text for you in your choice of human voice. Voxdox is a PDF reader and a PDF Translator. A smart PDF to Speech system converts your documents to quality speech. Import your PDF documents convert their text to voice. Voxdox is also an eBook reader that supports EPUB, PRC, MOBI and MBP format eBooks, and an audio book creator that can turn any kind of text to a talking book in just a few clicks. Voxdox can be used as a document scanner utilizing your device`s camera. Just take a picture of any document in almost any language, translate it to a different language if you wish to do so, and convert it`s text to speech. Voxdox gives you the choice - listen to your document or simply read it - all audio materials are also presented in text form.

Converting text to voice has never been easier. Let your phone or tablet read aloud for you!

[Brian Gaff]

They say that there are so many different displays with differing methods of back lighting and no lighting that its going to be very difficult to do so that one can hear what has changed, and indeed make sense of the different symbols often used. Well, it sounds to me like they are talking themselves out of it to me. Brian

[Brian Gaff]

Hmm, there are lots of text to speech programs around. are you saying it can read the text selectively. this is what we need. For example, on this screenreader it will read as I type, it will read a menu title and only its highlighted item as I move around. What would be needed is a device that can do this for lcd displays, to allow, for example, one to read the name on a phone display, or to read a menu option on a microwave disply, and not make you have to scan and read the whole thing every time you press a button to hear the change. Theoretically, if it could turn the screen to text then it could compare and spot changes in the text.

Reading a screen of text has never been the issue, as pdf files do that natively, and so do screenreaders. Of course there are some protected docs, but that is a whole other argument over copyright etc.

So the key problems probably break down as. The need to cope with lots of different types of disply The need to spot changes fairly quickly and announce them The ability to not be confused by the inevitable flashing colon or cursor or clock display, and only read the changed items altered by the user.

Brian

[Richard]

Hmmm... those criteria definitely aren't met.

[spuorgelgoog]

(etc)

this could all be sorted fairly easily with a plain text output to infra-red or Bluetooth, leaving the phone and app to sort out the speech synthesis.

Owain

[dr.s.lartius]

I think the way to do it is for you or an assistant to take an initial photo of the item, nominally square-on at a distance of 20 cm (one hand-span). Then a rectangle enclosing the display is marked and remembered.

Then, whenever you want a reading, you hold the phone at about 20 cm, and about square-on, so that the phone can pattern-match overall and determine which area of what it sees it should read and speak.

Setup could also select areas to exclude from pattern-match, such as irrelevant bits of display.

You could also include a basic QR code on the displaying device, so that it coould tell you what it was actually looking at - a numerical reading is of little use if one cannot be certain what it was actually seeing.

To save initialisation in that manner, perhaps the display area could be surrounded by marks easily recognised - avocado spots on puce, for example.

The rest, of course, is just software.

[Graham.]

Infra-red networking. I had almost forgotten about that.