Braille Monitor
May 2008
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The KnfbReader Mobile:
An Individual Perspective
by Michael D. Barber
From the Editor: Michael Barber is president of the NFB of Iowa. He
is also a technology specialist who works at the Iowa Department for the Blind.
He has been using the new knfbReader Mobile. Here is his report:
It
is late Thursday evening, and I have just checked into my motel room in a small
Iowa town. After I get my computer set up (always a high priority), I start
looking around for printed material I know exists in this room. For instance,
I want to know what TV channels are available. I search to the left of the TV,
and there it is--a letter-sized sheet of paper.
From my pocket I take my Nokia N82 cell phone and turn it on by
pressing a button on the top of the phone. Soon I hear the familiar Nokia music
sounds letting me know the phone is active. Then I press a button just to the
left and a bit above the five-way scroll box on the phone. I hear a message
that says, "Hello. I am the knfbReader Mobile."
Yes, that's right, reading software is now available in a small
cell phone. Ray Kurzweil, the world-acclaimed inventor, promised us six years
ago that by 2008 we would enjoy reading portability we could put in our shirt
pockets, and now it's here. It's the knfbReader Mobile, and it does fit in my
shirt pocket.
This is amazing to me considering where all this began. You see,
I remember the very first reading machine back in 1976. That machine took up
two tables and cost about $50,000. It was Ray Kurzweil who invented that machine
as a result of a conversation he had on an airplane with a blind person who
told him that, although he could accomplish many tasks independently, it would
be nice if he could read printed material on his own. Back in those days we
were impressed with a machine that could scan and read back to us a letter,
a memo, or even a book. Even then Mr. Kurzweil was promising reading portability
within the next twenty-five years.
Years went by, and many of us will remember the Arkenstone and
Arkenclone machines, the VERA, and other systems that helped us to read the
printed page. But none of these was portable. We first saw portability as a
reality in 2005 with the advent of the Kurzweil-National Federation of the Blind
Reader. This was comprised of a standard PDA with a digital camera attached
to it. With this device we could read our mail, office memos, printed receipts,
and later U.S. currency. Portable as this was, it was still too bulky to put
into a pocket comfortably.
But now we have a truly portable reading device combined with
a cell phone. With the addition of screen-reading software such as Mobile Speaks
or Talks, it is now possible to access the other functions of the phone, including
making and receiving phone calls and managing personal information such as names
and phone numbers of contacts and appointments in the calendar. The phone also
offers an accessible GPS program, an Adobe PDF reading program, a voice recorder,
a music player, and much more. Wonderful as it is, this particular phone, the
Nokia N82, offers access to AT&T or T-Mobile only. It will not work with
Verizon, Sprint, U.S. Cellular, or other non-GSM networks.
The Nokia N82 is about the size of a Milky Way candy bar, and
unlike too many other cell phones, its keypad is very easy to feel. The buttons
have just the right amount of space between them and are raised enough so that
they can be located easily by touch. And the phone has two gigabytes of memory.
(For those of you who may not be techno geeks like me, that's a whale of a lot
of memory.) Above the keypad is a square box, which is called the five-way scroll
box. This box contains up, down, left, right, and enter buttons. To the left
of the box is a button that activates different functions, depending on what
area of the button you press. Pressing the top of this square button will activate
the knfbReader Mobile. Pressing the very small button on the extreme left edge
of the phone will activate the phone's Send feature. Pressing the bottom edge
of the button will bring up the phone's main menu. To the right of the five-way
scroll box is the End Call button, the top edge of which can be pressed to exit
the knfbReader Mobile. If you turn the phone around so that the back of it is
facing you, you'll find a slide switch that moves from left to right. When this
switch is moved to the left, the camera lens is closed; when it's moved to the
right, the lens is open, and you can take a picture.
Back in my motel room I position the cell phone over the page
and about a foot above it. My finger moves to the bottom edge of the five-way
scroll box, and I gently press it. knfbReader Mobile announces, "Taking
picture," followed by the sound of a camera snapping a picture. This is
followed by some fifteen seconds in which I hear periodic beeps while the image
is being processed. Then I hear the various channels available to me. My curiosity
leads me to other printed material in the room, and I learn that, if I had forgotten
my toothpaste, toothbrush, or shaving cream, all I would have to do is to call
the front desk to get help. Most important, though, I can tell which package
of coffee is not decaffeinated. Additionally, I am able to use the reader to
read the dialing instructions on the room phone just above its keypad.
But that's not all this device is capable of. I recently visited
an ATM machine and withdrew $50. I had three bills. I knew that one was a ten-dollar
bill, but which one? All I had to do was to position the reader above the bill
and press the zero key on the keypad. A picture was taken, and the bill was
recognized as the ten I was looking for. And, by pressing the pound key followed
by the zero, I could tell whether I was looking at the back or front of the
bill and which direction it was facing.
You can customize the reader by changing the many user settings
available to you. For example, by pressing the number 7 key on the keypad, you
can enter the audio settings and change the rate, pitch, and volume of the speech
as well as changing to any installed voice. If you have some vision, you can
adjust the size of the print on the screen by pressing the number 9 key and
choosing between small, medium, and large. There is also a setting here for
turning the display off.
Thus far I've been able to read my personal mail (including bills,
junk mail, etc.), some catalogs, pages in a phone book, memos, receipts, and
business cards. As noted earlier, I've also been able to scan and recognize
various denominations of bills. Additionally, I was visiting a financial institution
very recently where I was waiting for my wife to fill out a document. In front
of me on the counter was a stack of printed material. I almost forgot and asked
my wife what they were, but then I remembered I had my knfbReader Mobile with
me and found that it was a personal survey a person could take to see if he
or she was ready for retirement.
I have been impressed with the clarity of speech from this little
device as well as the accuracy of the optical character recognition. As with
any scanning and reading software, you do not always get 100 percent accuracy,
but in many instances it's very close. Reading catalogs or magazines with a
lot of colored text can sometimes be a challenge and may slow down the recognition
process.
So how does this device compare with Kurzweil 1000 and OpenBook,
the two desktop solutions that are in wide use today? The most obvious comparison
is that you can scan and read documents with all three systems. You can also
scan and recognize currency with all three systems. All three systems will let
you save your scanned document, but both OpenBook and Kurzweil 1000 allow you
to save your document in many different file formats. The huge difference is
portability. With both Kurzweil and OpenBook, you must have both a computer
and scanner, and neither of these is truly portable. With the knfbReader Mobile,
you have a system that truly can be carried in a pocket.
As I think about the future of this device, I would like to see
the following:
� A few more available file formats for saving documents; right
now there is only one.
� The ability to send a file to yourself or someone else by email.
� The ability to use a Braille display so those who are deaf-blind can enjoy
reading portability.
All in all, this is an excellent piece of technology and will
prove to be very useful to me both at home and at work. It will be very useful
for the person attending conferences or seminars where there may be handouts.
It would also be useful for the college student who goes to a class where the
instructor distributes handouts that must be read immediately. I do not recommend
using the knfbReader Mobile to recognize money handed back to you while you're
at the head of a long checkout line at a department store or supermarket; the
task of scanning each bill is still time consuming.
Finally, I found that the excellent audio tutorial, narrated by
James Gashel, was very easy to follow and had me up and running in no time at
all. Everything you need to know about the reader to get you started scanning
documents or recognizing currency is delivered in very clear terms.
You can obtain more information about the knfbReader Mobile, including
where to buy, directly from knfbReader Technologies. The Web address is <http://www.knfbreader.com/products-mobile.php>.
The phone number to call is (877) 547-1500. The knfbReader Mobile sells for
$2,195. This price includes the reading software and the Nokia N82 phone but
not a calling plan or the Talks or Mobile Speak software.