One for Brian

[Mr Pounder Esquire]

With respects and a lot of admiration for you.

[ARW]

Any chance you could be more specific?

[Bill Wright]

Yes it's just a whole lot of stuff.

Bill

[spuorgelgoog]

If it's anything like the standard of printing I've had from the NHS amongst others, standard size print viewed through a magnifier can be very fuzzy.

It really is ridiculous that they can't effectively record and use communications preferences. If Facebook can work out you've broken up with your girlfriend before you've decided to, why can't the NHS handle "large print".

Owain

[Brian Gaff]

Incidentally nothing about a blind man on that link. Brian

[Brian Gaff]

Nope lots of stuff but no blind related stuff unless its after the sport part which came second in tab order but I lost the will to live by then. Brian

[ARW]

It happens:-)

[GB]

Assuming initially that it is for someone like Brian, who has a PC (I assume) plus knows what he's doing, I think this could be done for nothing.

My version of Microsoft Document Imaging (comes with Office) has a button to start the scan, has really excellent OCR, and has a button to transfer text to word. Then you just need to strip out hard carriage returns (if you can be bothered) and increase the font size.

That's a reasonable job for zero Pounds. It should be pretty straightforward to automate the whole process with VBA. (I'd expect as a rank amateur to accomplish that in a few hours.)

Making it dead easy to use would be much harder. I guess that in a commercial environment the initial version would be £20k-£100k to develop. So, it would only be worthwhile if there's a reasonable demand. But given the number of partially sighted people, I'm just astonished if it hasn't been done?

[Robin]

I'm not sure what to take from your starting assumptions of a user like Brian who knows what he is doing and has all the kit (scanner or camera included). Are you saying Brian is the average NHS user with visual impairment? Or that only people like Brian are worth bothering with?

Anyhow, if you want to argue that it's not hard for the NHS to meet users' needs with page readers it seems to me you need to address the many people who don't have all the hardware; and those who aren't even used to a keyboard and mouse. And won't even be able to see the button to start the scan on a default installation. If you want to go the PC + scanner route you'll need to budget for training.

And for maintenance/repair costs: elderly people with impaired vision aren't immune from accidents with hardware.

I am rather surprised that you have commented so trenchantly on this subject if you are unaware that it has indeed "been done". I'll defer to Brian (and very probably others) who know more than me. But from helping a couple of people I know hardware can be bought which makes it simpler than a PC plus scanner combo. But it costs around 3,000 pounds. And many - I'd wager most - of the NHS people with visual impairment would need training on top of that. You may not think that expensive. I suspect they - or NHS budget holders - would.

[Harry Bloomfield]

Brian Gaff formulated on Monday :

Both our local university hospitals use the same number, so I can whitelist that, but the problem is - if you miss the call you have no idea which hospital has rung, or which department ha attempted to ring. The number they present, doesn't accept incoming calls, so you are left having to guess.

[GB]

I started off by assuming it had of course been done!

*If* there is sufficient uptake, £3k seems rather high. OTOH, given the price tag, that may limit uptake.

All the people with vision problems that I know are perfectly capable mentally and fine with tech, so they can cope with relatively cheap hardware/software combos. I don't think there's anything wrong with trying to help them to cope better with the wide range of documents that inevitably come their way, rather than leaving them frustrated and unable to read many of them.

Your argument seems to be that everybody should be issued with the same rather expensive solution that suits the non-techies. As that is too expensive for all, nothing can be done.

[Robin]

Nor do I. But our acquaintance differs. I know people who have worked all their lives, brought up families, and are keeping well but wouldn't cope well if presented with a PC and scanner. Some have tried PCs but given up. I don't know if that means they are not "perfectly capable mentally".

No, my argument is that "a text to speech machine" may well not be a cheap, satisfactory alternative to large print for Mr Tupper.

[GB]

I don't know why you said that? My words were: "perfectly capable mentally and fine with tech".

Neither of us know Mr Tupper, so there's no point speculating.

[Harry Bloomfield]

Wouldn't a better solution be to have letters supplied in an audio format, on cheap media, produced at the letter's source?