MU Develops Device To Help Visually Impaired Read Small Digital Screens

Faculty and students at Marshall University are working to help the people who have trouble seeing the small digital screens found on everything from cell phones to microwaves. A device developed by university physicist Thomas Wilson and engineered by faculty and students is designed to measure the contrast of digital displays. It was unveiled Wednesday morning at the American Foundation for the Blind Technology and Employment Center in Huntington. Officials say the device is the first step in determining the level of contrast necessary to make digital displays usable by people with vision loss.

Marshall professor Joe Fuller says the goal of the project is to help people fully participate in an increasingly digital world.

Swiss Town Rolls Out RFID System for Blind Bus Riders

National and European Union regulations require that public transit operators across Europe to provide more information for blind and visually impaired riders. A Swiss public transport agency, the Verkehrsbetriebe St. Gallen (VBSG), is rolling out an RFID-based system that allows blind riders to check transit information at bus stops, determine the destination of passing buses and flag them down. Trials of the system, called PAVIP (Personal Assistant for Visually Impaired People) and developed by Bones Inc., started in May. St. Gallen's entire fleet of 70 public buses were equipped with active ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) RFID modules that can both receive and transmit data, and the city's 260 stops were fitted with passive high-frequency (HF) RFID tags. Fifteen blind users are currently testing the system, and starting in mid-August, St. Gallen will start a full-scale pilot with as many as 250 blind riders throughout the city.

The Milestone handheld device contains an HF RFID reader, a UHF RFID transceiver, a digital voice recorder and an audio player. Bones, which is based in St. Gallen, makes RFID-enabled personal digital assistants (PDA) for the blind. The cornerstone of the PAVIP project is the Bones Milestone—a small, handheld device containing an HF RFID reader, a UHF RFID transceiver (the same type of module installed on the buses), a digital voice recorder and an audio player capable of playing MP3 files, as well as all other major digital audio formats. The Milestone's built-in RFID HF reader consists of a Texas Instruments RFID interrogator IC, the TRF7960, which supports the passive 13.56 MHz tags complying with the ISO 14443A, ISO 14443B, ISO 15693 and ISO 18000-3 RFID standards. The handheld's active UHF RFID reader is comprised of a Radiocrafts RC1280 transceiver module. The Milestone costs 350 euros in a basic configuration and approximately 500 euros for the version used in the transit trials.

Read entire article on rfidjournal.com

Software for blind to surf the net

University of Washington experts say that they have written new software, WebAnywhere , which can enable blind and visually impaired people to surf the Internet at any place. Richard Ladner, a professor of computer science and engineering, has revealed that the software can read aloud Web text on any computer with speakers or headphone connections.

"This is for situations where someone who's blind can't use their own computer but still wants access to the Internet. At a museum, at a library, at a public kiosk, at a friend's house, at the airport," said Ladner, who will demonstrate the tool next week in Dallas at the National Federation of the Blind's annual convention.

A UW doctoral student in computer science and engineering named Jeffrey Bigham developed WebAnywhere under Ladner's supervision, as part of a research project funded by the National Science Foundation.

Unlike the existing free screen readers, the new software does not have to be downloaded onto a computer. It processes the text on an external server, and sends the audio file to play in the user's Web browser.

"You don't have to install new software. So even if you go to a heavily locked-down computer, say at a library, you can still use it," Bigham said.

Users don’t even have to update the software because they get its latest version each time they visit the site.

While testing the software, the researchers asked some people to use it to do three things that are typically done at public machines — check e-mail, look up a bus schedule and search for a restaurant's phone number.

People using WebAnywhere were able to successfully complete all three tasks, using a variety of machines and Internet connections.

Visit the WebAnywhere project page
View WebAnywhere in action on YouTube

Free Screen Magnifier DesktopZoom Version 3 Released!

DesktopZoom is the most popular free screen magnifier for the Windows platform, that you can run without any installation and from a USB stick.
DesktopZoom version 3 now includes basic speech support! DesktopZoom with more than 11,000 downloads on magnifiers.org is the most popular free screen magnifier for visually impaired. It includes important features such as full screen magnification and tracking of menus and carets.

Most remarkable new feature in version 3, is basic speech support. If you now move your mouse over the Desktop, DesktopZoom now speaks out what is under the mouse. Also menus and objects that get the focus are now spoken out. You can now TAB through a webpage and Desktopzoom speaks aloud the selected links.

By default all latest Windows releases include the English Microsoft Text-to-speech engine. If you have other text-to-speech engines on your computer, you can select one through the DesktopZoom Speech TAB.

Other new features in DesktopZoom 3 are:

• You can now access the DesktopZoom configuration window while zooming
• New option to sometimes let DesktopZoom not track the mouse.
• New design of the key TAB to configure the hotkeys.

Visit the DesktopZoom website for more information and a free download.