Eye-Pal – instant access to printed material
(by Andrew Downie, February 2011)
Introduction
To put this article into context, also see the review of OpenBook with Pearl, which is a similar product. Also see the Eye-Pal and OpenBook with Pearl comparison.
Who can benefit?
It is relevant to people who, for any reason, have difficulty reading text from paper documents. This includes people who have little or no vision, those who have visual perception problems and those whose physical limitations make holding paper documents difficult or impossible.
What is it?
The Eye-Pal converts paper-based printed material into electronic text almost instantly. It is used in conjunction with a Windows-based or Apple Macintosh computer and connects to the computer via a USB port (it must be a USB2 port). The Windows version was tested during this evaluation. All operations are performed on the computer through software supplied with the Eye-Pal. Power is supplied by the computer.
Rather than employing a conventional scanner, the Eye-Pal captures contents of a page through a camera. A light in the camera allows use in a wide range of lighting, including complete darkness. Using a camera means that the capture process is very rapid. While that is not surprising, the process of converting the image to text to be displayed on screen and spoken by the speech synthesizer is usually almost as fast.
Installation
The software is installed prior to connecting the Eye-Pal. Before connecting the Eye-Pal, it is “unfurled”. The horizontal rails that form an L shape on the tabletop are locked into position by small swivelling latches. The arm holding the camera is raised to the horizontal and clicks into place. This process is very straight forward for anyone with reasonable dexterity.
When the USB cable is connected for the first time, a “found new hardware” dialog appears. Select, “No, not this time” and click Next. Select “install the software automatically”. On subsequent connections to that USB port, the Eye-Pal will be recognised automatically.
Using the Eye-Pal
A document (either single page or an open book) is placed on the table that the Eye-Pal is standing on, using the horizontal rails of the Eye-Pal as a guide. The rails define an area of an A4 page. Smaller items, down to business cards, can be processed. Options for processing a book or magazine where two adjacent pages occupy a larger area are discussed below.
There are two modes for processing material. The most basic processes one page at a time. Each time a new page is captured, text from the previous one is lost. Contents of each page can, however, be saved prior to processing the next. The more sophisticated mode involves creating a book. This process requires entering a title and, optionally, an author. Each captured page is saved as a separate jpeg file (discussed further below). When working in this mode, several options are available.
- The book can be processed one page at a time. This will usually involve rotating the book for odd and even pages. That some of the text on the page adjacent to the one being processed is within the camera’s view usually does not matter.
- All odd pages can be processed. The page count is then reset to 2 (assuming commencement at page 1) and the process is repeated for even pages. The software then collates the pages.
- If the book is small enough and there is sufficient gap between text on the adjacent pages, two pages can be scanned at once.
When processing material as a book, the camera can be activated manually or automatically. To capture text manually, the camera is activated by pressing the spacebar on the computer once the document has been put in position. When utilising the automatic function, the camera is triggered when no movement has been detected for several seconds. This proved to be a very effective method of processing multiple pages, the camera never being activated prematurely. It also meant that effort was not taken away from holding bulky books in position.
Accuracy
The Eye-Pal was tested in lighting conditions ranging from a large office with a good coverage of fluorescent lighting, a small room with natural light through a window and total darkness. Having resolved an issue resulting from an undocumented feature discussed below, changing light made little difference to accuracy. As photographers know, varying lighting conditions can significantly affect results if the camera and/or photographer do not adjust for different conditions. Unlike a conventional scanner, products such as the Eye-Pal must deal with this issue.
A variety of printed material was used during testing. This ranged from relatively uncomplicated text on A4 paper from a laser printer to textbooks and magazines. The text from the laser printer was almost completely error free. While there were more errors from textbooks, results were still very impressive. Information at tops of pages was at the greatest risk of being misinterpreted. Importantly, books were quite thick, resulting in considerable curving of the paper towards the spine. Complex magazine layouts were handled very effectively, material being consistently presented in an appropriate sequence. There was greater likelihood of errors when pictures were intermingled with text. While this occasionally led to severe deterioration of accuracy, results were generally very acceptable. In summary, an informal assessment of accuracy put it at a comparable level to that achieved with a conventional scanner and commercially available OCR software.
Formatting
While the Eye-Pal presents material in a linear manner, suitable for synthetic speech or electronic Braille output, it can also report on page layout. Available information includes the number of sections, columns and headings. Another important detail is whether the page is upsidedown, which allows easy orientation of a book by a blind user. There are commands for navigating by character, word, sentence and section.
A single page can be saved as either a jpeg (image) or text file. A jpeg can be reopened in the Eye-Pal software.
A book can be saved as a text, rtf or xml file or as a series of jpegs, one for each page. A book saved as jpeg files can be navigated page by page or a specific page number can be selected. The disadvantage of this option is that errors cannot be corrected. When saved as an RTF file, each page is formatted as a single paragraph. Text files are saved with a hard return at the end of each line and multiple hard returns following a paragraph. Page numbers are included at the top of each page. The chosen format may vary depending on such factors as personal preference, nature of material and the type of editing (if any) to be undertaken.
Each page can also be saved as an audio file, using the currently set speed of the speech synthesizer. Because the wave format is used, audio files are quite large.
Documentation
Installation instructions, a quick guide and a manual are supplied in both MS Word 2003 and PDF formats. The PDF files are not structured for assistive technology access and lack bookmarks, a valuable navigation feature. A product primarily aimed at blind people could be expected to include a fully accessible PDF manual. People who use a screen reader with relevant facilities will appreciate inclusion of formal heading styles in the Word files.
Information is provided in an informal, friendly tone. Apart from one omission, information on the various aspects of the product is easy to locate and to digest. The omission is that there is no reference to turning the light on the camera on and off. This is done by pressing ctrl-l, but see under Issues below for more on this.
Issues
The only problem encountered during testing involved the camera light. If, after pressing the spacebar to start the camera, ctr-l is pressed, the light is toggled on or off and the change is announced by the speech synthesizer. This command should not toggle the light if the camera has not been started, but it does, with no audible feedback. In early testing, the command was pressed inadvertently while issuing a screen reader command. No reference to turning the light on and off could be found in the manual and it took some discussion with the distributor and manufacturer to resolve the issue.
Specifications
| Manufacturer | ABiSee, http://www.abisee.com/ |
|---|---|
| Dimensions | 43 x 10cm folded |
| Weight | Approximately 500g |
| Computer requirements | Computer with Windows XP or later and 2 GHz Pentium or equivalent AMD processor; Apple Macintosh with OS X 10.5 or later. USB2 port |
| Australian distributor | Quantum Technology Phone: (02) 9479-3100 Website: http://www.quantumtechnology.com.au |
| Price | $1,969 |
