Intel’s E-Book Reader For The Blind Is Awesome, But Will Publishers Accuse It Of Stealing?
Dec 10, 2009 Science and Technology
Intel threw its hat into the e-reader ring today with the release of the Intel Reader–which, unlike any other reader, is built specifically for the blind. With an onboard camera, Intel’s device can convert text from any page photographed by a user into audio, which is read aloud through headphones. Which will surely upset someone, somewhere.
The Intel reader is designed for the 55 million people in the U.S. alone that suffer from some kind of vision-related ailment that impairs their reading. And on top of the photo text recognition feature, a separate content capture station can convert large amounts of text, even an entire book, into audio for easier consumption.
And therein lies the snag: publishing companies have expressed distaste in the past for any device that takes copyrighted printed word and converts it into audio–see the recent dispute over Kindle 2’s ability to read its books aloud, which was intended for use by the blind.
Full article at PopSci
February 14th, 2010 at 5:38 am
Great article. There’s a lot of good info here, though I did want to let you know something – I am running Mac OS X with the current beta of Firefox, and the design of your blog is kind of quirky for me. I can read the articles, but the navigation doesn’t work so good.