SARA 7.5 Update Brings More Exciting New Scanning and Reading Features

Users are calling the Freedom Scientific SARA™ the ultimate scanning and reading appliance for blind and low-vision users. Now, the newest SARA update adds even more great features.

Since the release of the SARA, users have commented on its ease of use, with operation so simple that it can be used right out of the box, with little or no experience - and no cables to connect, no installation or configuration of software necessary. By pressing one button, the SARA scans a page from a novel, magazine, typed doctor’s instructions, and many other types of documents and automatically reads in a clear, natural-sounding voice. The SARA even reads text produced in other languages.

All of the SARA’s functions are easily accessible through a simple, intuitive keypad. The help function can be toggled to provide a learning mode in which users can press the keyboard’s various keys and hear their functions.

Users can attach a monitor to the SARA, turning it into a powerful low-vision reading device with a variety of fonts and font sizes for easy reading of documents on the screen. The foreground and background color settings can be adjusted to reduce eye fatigue while reading. Built-in spacing settings increase the amount of space between characters, words, lines, and sentences to help separate the currently highlighted text from other document text. Word highlighting synchronizes with the built-in speech to highlight each word as it is spoken.

The 7.5 update includes many more enhancements:

• The new RealSpeak® Solo speech synthesizer provides even higher quality speech, in 18 languages. Hear samples of the new speaking voices.
• The SARA can now play audio material produced in the DAISY (Digital Accessible Information System) format from a CD. When listening to DAISY audio, the user can quickly navigate between sections, rewind and fast forward, and adjust the rate of the audio narration. After the file is closed, the SARA returns to the last location in the file when it is reopened.
• SARA can scan a new page in the background while the user continues reading a current page.
• The SARA comes with 40 public domain books for countless hours of reading enjoyment. The collection includes such classics as A Tale of Two Cities, Dracula, Treasure Island and many more.
• Files can be saved from the SARA directly to a burnable CD-ROM and opened with the SARA’s built-in CD-ROM drive.
• As well as supporting TXT and RTF file formats, SARA now supports ARK, DOC, PDF, HTML, and XML formats.
• Files opened from CD can be saved to the internal hard drive using a different file name of your choosing.
• The four keys on the front of the unit provide quick access to commonly used functions. Users can assign a variety of different commands to these four keys. This means you can set up quick access functions such as moving to the top or bottom of a document or toggling scanning modes.

All of these features are packed into a device that is one of the most affordable scanning and reading appliances on the market.

All current SARA owners will be sent the 7.5 update. If you have a SARA and do not get the update by the end of September, please contact Freedom Scientific.

Source: Freedom Scientific Newsletter