Information technology and society: ‘reading devices’ for visually impaired now in Russia

Recognition technologies of Abbyy company which develops OCR systems, were integrated for the first time into hardware-in-the-loop complex meant to reproduce ordinary printed text via speech synthesis. Using the ElecGeste INFA-300 device (the current version) blind and visually impaired with no skills of computer work can get to know the content of books, periodicals, letters, medical instructions and other printed materials in Russian and English.

In order to recognize texts, AbbyyFineReader Engine, created on the basis of Abbyy OCR technologies for texts processing, is used. Now the users of ElecGeste INFA-300 can operate the device quite easily: they need just to place the document into the complex’s scanner and press one button. After that the device will begin reproduce the text. The device is also able to process documents from various detachable data-carriers connected to it via USB-interface. Owing to recognition technologies the ‘reading machine’ of ElecGeste developing company supports all widely used graphical formats including JPEG, TIFF и PDF.

ElecGeste INFA-300 has the form of an ordinary scanner. In order to simplify the use of the device, all the control buttons are on its front panel. To turn it off all one needs to do is to plug it in and press the ‘on’ button. There is a hard disc integrated into ElecGeste INFA-300 to keep text information. The complex is operated by the voice menu.