Image Capture and OCR Apps for the iPhone

This is part of a series of blogs our Director, Alan Knue, has composed to help people increase their reading and writing efficiency

In this day and age when many current journals, magazines, newspapers, and books are available in electronic formats, the need for scanning and applying optical character recognition (OCR) to print material is becoming less and less. However, many older texts and references in libraries are still only available in printed form. Scanning pages from bound books is always problematic. It is difficult to get pages completely flat and when scanned and the text nearest to the binding is usually distorted. 

I hate having to bring my laptop and scanner with me to the library to scan pages from books, so I decided to test three popular and highly recommended image capture and/or OCR apps for the iPhone. These apps are generally designed to get a quick electronic version of printed materials, including hand written notes, but I thought they might be useful for scanning pages from books. The programs varied in intuitive design but all were generally easy to use after a short time.

General Observations

Flat pages worked well using all of the apps, but since I was interested in how these programs handled bound pages, I chose a page from a thick bound book printed in a serif font (similar to Times) and containing a variety of text styles including italicized text. As a comparison, I also scanned the same page using a flatbed scanner and used ClaroRead for its OCR capabilities to convert the page to an electronic document. The document produced using this method had nearly 99% accuracy. All of these apps were affected by lighting and caused some gradation of shadow across a page due to the lay of the open book. Sometimes the flash on the iPhone 4 helped and other times it created a tunnel effect with the text in the center being quite bright and crisp and the surrounding text gradually less distinct. The best results were accomplished when I could get a light in front of me to shine right on the page. But even in the best case scenario, the resulting jpg images, PDFs, and OCR-captured documents generated by these apps varied greatly.

App Review

Genius Scan (available in a free version and a $2.99 ad-free version with the option to upload files to Dropbox, EverNote, and GoogleDocs.). This app is only for scanning documents (no OCR) and was easy to use. Since it does not have an OCR, you need to have one available should you want to convert the image to electronic text. I used the program to scan a page from a book and email myself a jpeg and PDF version of the page. I then used ClaroRead on the 2 files to see how well it could recognize the text. I was never able to get a good enough image scan of a bound page for accurate OCR using this app and text recognition was always quite poor (at times nearly 0%).

Perfect OCR ($3.99). The app is easy and intuitive and there is good functionality for eliminating uneven lighting and shadows, improving the contrast, and reducing the effect of movement or jitter while using the camera. This app on its own produced electronic documents that were about 80% accurate in text recognition.

SayText (Free) actually got the best results of all at 90%+ accuracy. SayText utilizes the iPhone’s built in VoiceOver, so you can instantly have the OCR captured document read out loud. But SayText has no option for saving the documents on your iPhone which is a bit annoying but you can email the OCR captured text document to yourself. All of the other apps, have some document management for storing documents for access at a later date.

Of course, these 3 apps aren’t the only scanning apps one can find. There are several other options with similar functionality and more are added to the app library all the time. Most just take a picture of the document and convert it to a jpeg or PDF (like Genius Scan) whereas a few others include OCR for converting the picture of the document to electronic text (like Perfect OCR or SayText). All tested to date have produced similar results to the 3 described in this post. If you discover or know of a scanning app that you find does the trick, let me know!

Until that perfect scanning app comes along, I would use the free SayText to grab text and have it read out loud or to email it to myself for reference later. But for efficiency and accuracy, I won’t be abandoning my trusty scanner and ClaroRead anytime soon.

To try on these apps and others on an iPod or iPhone contact our AT Specialists for a demonstration of the available options.

Scanning Software, Text-to-Speech, and Text-to-Audio File

This is part of a series of blogs our Director, Alan Knue, has composed to help people increase their reading and writing efficiency

It is Monday, and your English teacher just gave you a short story to read out of a book. Your biology teacher just uploaded a 10 page electronic PDF for you to read. You are expected to read both assignments by the end of the week for discussion in class. Reading isn’t easy for you and if only these documents were provided in an accessible text format, then you could use your handy AT software with text-to-speech to help you work your way through these documents.

I didn’t have any AT options in school, so I was rarely able to read fast enough to complete a reading assignment on time and failed many tests because I couldn’t keep up. I had to rely on peer discussion groups and teacher lectures to cover the reading material to actually learn what was in those various texts. By college I had become a human tape recorder, memorizing practically everything said in conversations, in lectures, and in study groups.

Today, what AT do I use? If I need to read printed material, I can set up my flatbed scanner and use a feature in ClaroRead called "Scan from Paper." By taking what is essentially a photograph of a page it applies a slick piece of software known as optical character recognition or OCR to the page. Of course the better the printed copy, the better the program will be able to recognize text on the page. Students and their support team using any program with a built in OCR, like ClaroRead, will need to be able to find places where the OCR didn’t do such a good job and correct the mistakes before having a “clean” copy. TTS can certainly help with the clean-up of a scanned document by aiding students in finding incorrect words.

What about the electronic PDF reading assignment? ClaroRead has a nifty “Scan from PDF/File” feature which applies OCR to the electronic PDF rather than first having to scan a printed copy. Of course, it would make a student’s life far easier if these documents were already in a good electronic format, but that is a whole other discussion.

ClaroRead takes this all one step further. You can also convert electronic text to an audio file (mp3) that you could then listen to on an iPod, Zune, or any other mp3 player. The “Save as Audio” feature is handy for short documents, but anything too long, and then it becomes difficult to find where you left off in your listening. Books and magazines are often available in other electronic formats, such as the Daisy format, and these will be discussed on our blog in later posts.

ClaroRead is not the only AT software available with strong scanning and OCR, and text-to-speech or audio file capabilities. Contact our AT Specialists for a demonstration of the available options.

Speech Feedback and Word Prediction featuring WordQ

This is part of a series of blogs our Director, Alan Knue, has composed to help people increase their reading and writing efficiency

I have great difficulty reading and recognizing words and I only see them as little pictures. I can recognize words in context, but often out of context I may not always know which word I’m seeing since many words look nearly identical to me and I don't recognize the individual letters. And please don’t ask me to spell a word; I may know how to spell it from memory, but I couldn’t tell you just by looking at it. I might be able to decipher the first letter and maybe the last letter, but everything in between is often just a mash of curved and straight lines. People often ask me which letters look the same to me and I reply- “all of them.”

WordQ has been my favorite reading and writing support program for many years. Simplicity is the key to WordQ. The interface features a floating toolbar with just 4 buttons: Options, Words, Speech, and Read. Users can access any of last 3 functions either by direct selection or by hotkeys; the latter make it easy to turn features on and off, allowing one to minimize the program menu bar while working.

As I discussed in the previous blogs, speech feedback, commonly called text-to-speech or TTS, and word prediction are important tools for aiding students in reading and writing and these are the cornerstone features of WordQ.

WordQ comes with several high quality and natural sounding voices in 4 languages: English, Spanish, French and German. It works seamlessly with many office suites, including Microsoft Office, and most internet browsers and mail handling programs. I can easily highlight a block of text and press the F11 key (Read) and provided Speech is turned on (easily done with the F10 key), I will hear the text spoken out loud in the voice and speed I have selected in the speech feedback options. Using the Read feature for proofreading is very important for catching missing or incorrect words and to detect run on sentences.

The longer you use WordQ’s word prediction, the more useful the suggested words become and those you use frequently, including word combinations, turn up higher in your prediction list. It will suggest synonyms as you type, helping you think outside of your usual vocabulary. WordQ will even suggest words taking into consideration possible spelling and typing mistakes, including words spelled incorrectly but phonetically (WordQ calls this “creative spelling”). Homophone support is robust- the word prediction box displays usage examples which when combined with speech feedback can help students distinguish between commonly confused words, such as "there,” "their," and “they’re.” And the latest WordQ version makes abbreviation/ expansion easy to setup and your abbreviations can be added to your user dictionary so they will appear in the prediction box. And like the Speech and Read features, if you don’t need word prediction all the time, you can turn it on and off easily using the F9 key.

WordQ is not the only AT software available with strong word prediction and TTS capabilities and options.  Contact our AT Specialists for a demonstration of the available options.

Writing and Reading Support Built-in to Common Word Processing Programs

This is part of a series of blogs our Director, Alan Knue, has composed to help people increase their reading and writing efficiency

Chances are, if you’ve ever used a computer you have used a word processing program. Composing an email, editing a document, formatting a newsletter, and posting a blog are all examples of word processing. Word processing offers users the ability to create documents, change the typeface, increase or decrease the font size, and otherwise manipulate, save, and print text.

Some word processing programs are more feature rich than others. While WordPad and Notepad do the job just fine, they offer little literacy support in the way of correctional cues, prediction, or feedback. Common writing support tools include Spellchecker and AutoCorrect. Spellchecker flags words in a document that are not spelled correctly by placing a red squiggly or dotted line under the misspelled word. Users can access the electronic dictionary and select the corrected word. For students who have difficulty writing, Spellchecker will easily distinguish misspelled words and offer corrections which could aid the student with their writing confidence. This feature has become ubiquitous not only in commercially available word processing programs such as Microsoft Word and Pages, but also in free word processing tools such as OpenOffice Writer and online processors like Adobe Buzzword. Firefox, Chrome, and Safari web browsers also include Spellchecker in fields where you can enter text. There is a free Spellchecker plug-in available for Internet Explorer as well.

AutoCorrect, also known as flexible or phonetic spelling, automatically corrects common spelling errors and improper capitalization, as well as, inserts common symbols or special characters thus by saving time for the writer. This function has become quite common among smart phone users composing SMS messages. There can be a disadvantage though, as some auto corrections result in completely incorrect text replacement. In fact, there are websites devoted to what has become known as “AutoCorrect fail.” For students who need writing support, AutoCorrect in conjunction with word processing programs should be used judiciously and with supervision as the corrections are undetectable visually and happen “in line” meaning once the user has pressed the space bar or enter key, the correction has already taken place without notification. As discussed in Reading with Text-To-Speech, TTS offers students audio feedback for their composed or received documents. The most current version of Microsoft Office 2010 offers a Text-To-Speech feature called “Speak.” To enable Speak, you will need to add it to the Quick Access Toolbar.

Contact our AT Specialists for more information about built in accessibility of Microsoft products. 

Reading with Text-to-Speech

Image of word highlighting feature for text-to-speech

For students with reading disabilities, completing reading assignments for class can be time consuming and frustrating. There is software that can help students not only keep up on reading assignments but also have a better idea what they have read. One of the most helpful features offered by many of these software programs is called text-to-speech (TTS). The ability to hear text read out loud is the important component in TTS that aids a student in reading speed and comprehension. Most software products that offer TTS also provide a feature that highlights the word being read out loud so that students can follow along and will associate the word on the computer screen with what they hear. This gives students a better understanding of what the word is and how that word should sound when they read it without the assistance of the software. Reading webpages and electronic documents is easily accomplished using TTS but many reading assignments come from books or printed handouts. Some software programs include the option to scan and convert hardcopy pages into a variety of electronic text formats including word documents, and then using TTS, these pages can be read out loud. Several software programs also have the ability to convert any electronic text to an audio file that could then be listened to on a digital music or mp3 player, which is a useful aid for keeping up with many reading assignments. When looking at the various products available with TTS and other reading, writing, and spelling aids, it is important to think about what features and supports the student needs. The software interface can range from simple, fewer-featured toolbars, such as WordQ, TextHelp Read & Write, or ClaroRead, that work with existing software such as Microsoft Office and internet browsers. More inclusive programs, such as WYNN or Kurzweil 3000, have their own word processors, study aids, and web browsers built into the user interface. If a student doesn’t need a fully featured all-in-one program, you can save time and money by investing in a simpler program with just those features that meet the specific needs of your student. But for students who would benefit from study aids and many of the other features discussed above it is often easier to go with a full featured program instead of trying to use multiple simpler programs in conjunction with one another. As always our AT Specialists are available to work with and explore the specific needs of students and their support team when determining what options might work best. These products and many others are available for short term loan through WATAP's Device Lending Library to help individuals make an informed decision about what products will work best for them.  

This is the first in a series of blogs our Director has composed to help people increase their reading and writing efficiency.