A Review of the Kurzweil-NFB Reader

The world’s first handheld optical character recognition (OCR) reading system, the Kurzweil-National Federation of the Blind (NFB) Reader (hereafter, the Reader), was released to the public on July 1, 2006. This innovative new technological device combines a digital camera and a personal digital assistant (PDA) to capture the image of printed text and translate it into synthetic speech. This article presents the results of our evaluation of the device at the AFB TECH product evaluation laboratory. Before presenting the results, though, I will briefly discuss the collaboration between renowned inventor Ray Kurzweil and the NFB to bring the Reader to market.

In 1975, Kurzweil (who was interviewed in the September 2004 issue of AccessWorld) unveiled the Kurzweil Reading Machine, which was the first multifont OCR system that was capable of converting printed text to synthetic speech. The original machine was a large stand-alone unit that has been described as being the size of a small washing machine. Priced at $50,000, its cost was out of the reach of individual consumers.

Over the three decades since the release of the Kurzweil Reading Machine, OCR technology has evolved considerably. It now runs on PCs that are equipped with inexpensive off-the-shelf scanners, and the leading consumer OCR software products for people who are blind cost just under $1,000. (Our latest evaluations of these leading software products, the Kurzweil 1000 from Kurzweil Educational Systems and OpenBook from Freedom Scientific, appeared in the July 2006 issue of AccessWorld.) The Reader takes this evolution one step further by putting the technology into a portable device that can be taken anywhere.

Continue reading Darren’s article on AccessWorld.