Full Transcript
Jeff Thompson:
Welcome to Blind Abilities. I’m Jeff Thompson. Voice Dream Reader, Voice Dream Mail, Voice Dream Writer, and now, Voice Dream Scanner. There you go. One more scanner app to check out.
Automated Voice:
Five, four, three, two, one.
Jeff Thompson:
I know, I’ve got a folder in my phone right now, I must have one, two, three, four, five scanner apps, and yet, this one comes from Voice Dream, LLC. With their reputation with Voice Dream Reader, I had to check this one out. So I bought it, $5.99, from the App Store. Downloaded it, fired it up, and it works pretty good. Today, in came the first update. Now, you’re able to get photographs that you already have in your phone, import ’em in, and there you go. So let’s open up the app.
Automated Voice:
Scanner.
Jeff Thompson:
The first place I’m going to take you, is the menus, because there’s three important settings here. Let’s go.
Automated Voice:
Menu. button.
Jeff Thompson:
We’ll go into settings.
Automated Voice:
Settings. button. Always enhance images. Switch button. On.
Jeff Thompson:
Now, enhancing, it just sounds good. I’m going to leave that on.
Automated Voice:
Re-text automatically after capture. Switch button. On.
Jeff Thompson:
And having it automatically read the texts after it processes, hey, I love that.
Automated Voice:
Play tone when edge is detected. Switch button. On.
Jeff Thompson:
Now this one, I would leave on for one important reason. It plays the tone when the edge is detected, and you get some reference back for it. It does get annoying, and as you’ll see on the home screen, there’s another option to turn it off when you want to. And you probably will want to turn it off here and there.
Jeff Thompson:
Okay. So the new button here.
Automated Voice:
Import photo. Button.
Jeff Thompson:
Import photos. Let’s do it.
Automated Voice:
Photos. Heading. All photos. Photo. Landscape.
Jeff Thompson:
I had my daughter send me a photograph of some text. I don’t know what it is yet, but we’ll find out. Upon returning to the main screen, you’ll be in the image preview.
Automated Voice:
Image preview. Double tap to capture image.
Jeff Thompson:
Take one swipe to the right and you’ll hear …
Automated Voice:
Page one.
Jeff Thompson:
Now this is interesting. It already processes it, and it’s already waitin’ there because listen.
Automated Voice:
The mamma law. The mamma law. All I’m saying children is that you can keep mama up at all hours …
Jeff Thompson:
And that’s just the thumbnail image in the queue. Kinda neat. So I’m gonna single finger, double tap. Now I can read this with voice over, or I can hit play. Eenie, meenie, minie. Okay. Let’s hit play.
Automated Voice:
Play. Button. The momma law. The momma law. All I’m saying children is that you can’t keep momma up at all hours of the night and expect her not to blow your college fund on Amazon. You can either sleep well and go to Harvard, or stay up all night and enjoy community college. Clear. Button. Save. Button.
Jeff Thompson:
So now I have the option that I can save this. Let’s send it to this sister app. Voice Dream Reader.
Automated Voice:
Save to Voice Dream Reader. Button. Save as PDF file. Button
Jeff Thompson:
You get four options here.
Automated Voice:
Save as text file. Button. Copy text. Button. Save to Voice Dream Reader. Button. Alert. Document saved. Clear all scanned pages? Button. Delete. Button.
Jeff Thompson:
So let’s check out Voice Dream Scanner using the camera and take a picture. I’ve got the back cover of Lois Strachan book, and here are the settings that you have, right below the image preview, and the images that you’ve just saved or have taken. Now for the purpose of this demo. I turned the edge detection off because the noise is a little bit loud, and it can be annoying. And in just a bit, I’ll demonstrate the edge detection noise.
Automated Voice:
Capture image. Button. Edge detection off. Button. Flashlight on. Button. Batch mode off. Image preview. Double tap to capture image. Play. Button.
Automated Voice:
Endorse by the South African National Council for the Blind and the South African Guide Dogs Association for the Blind. [inaudible] Have you ever wondered how a blind person pours a cup of a coffee? Or how they and their guide know when it’s safe to cross a busy road? When Lois Strachan lost her sight at the age of 21 years, she had to learn the answers to these, and the countless other questions of how to live as a blind person in a sighted world. In this delightfully quirky and entertaining book, Lois shares some of the secrets she discovered of how to live an ordinary life in an extraordinary way despite her blindness. An entertaining, informative, and educational read that gives you an insight into the life of an inspirational woman who lives life to the fullest. Well worth reading.
Automated Voice:
View Text or image. Showing image. View text or image. Showing text.
Jeff Thompson:
What I find surprisingly neat, is that you can listen to it, while listening to the image or listening to the text. You can make it your choice of what you want to display on the screen. Upon turning on the edge detection, you notice the noise, the beeping.
Automated Voice:
Edge detection off. Button. Edge detection on.
Jeff Thompson:
When you do have the image centered on the screen, you’ll get a continuous, steady sounding tone. The auto capture beta is interesting. I’ve had some trouble with it. You get a long sound. Sometime it captures it. Sometimes I don’t get any indication that it captured it, and yet, I find it down in the queue, image one, image two, and so forth.
Jeff Thompson:
So this, I think, needs some work because I need to know when it captured it, so I know to turn the page or flip the page over, while you have batch mode turned on. And if you’re not in batch mode, you just wait and wait, and pretty soon, there you go.
Jeff Thompson:
So I decided to just touch up in the image preview. Do double tap
Automated Voice:
Image preview.
Jeff Thompson:
Wait a little bit.
Automated Voice:
Image preview.
Jeff Thompson:
Do a double tap.
Automated Voice:
Image preview.
Jeff Thompson:
Turn the page.
Automated Voice:
Image preview.
Jeff Thompson:
Do a double tap. And it seemed to work, but I didn’t know it worked until I was swiped down, and I realized I had four or five images.
Automated Voice:
Edge detection off.
Jeff Thompson:
I’d saved them as a PDF.
Automated Voice:
Save as PDF file. Button.
Jeff Thompson:
To my files folder, in my I-phone.
Automated Voice:
Save to files.
Jeff Thompson:
And I went to the files folder.
Automated Voice:
A Different Way Sf Seeing. 7:42 P.M. 1.7 MegaBytes. PDF document.
Jeff Thompson:
Went down to share and opened with Voice Dream Reader.
Automated Voice:
New. A Different Way of Seeing. About three minutes. 55 seconds. zero percent read. PDF format
Jeff Thompson:
Hit play.
Automated Voice:
Play. Button. A Different Way Of Seeing. A blind woman’s journey of living and ordinary life in an extraordinary way.
Jeff Thompson:
It works. My overall feeling on Voice Dream Scanner. It’s a pretty good app. It has some very good, intuitive controls on it. I think the auto capture needs a little work. That’s probably why it says beta, obviously. And the batch mode, I would like to see more indication that it did capture it when it was taking a picture. Maybe when you’re using all the features all at once with the beta in there, maybe that’s part of the problem.
Jeff Thompson:
Another thing to remember, if you’re going into batch mode, make sure you clear out all your previous images. Otherwise, it will include those into the batch. So just hit clear. I already pulled the trigger on this one. I like it. It’s from Voice Dream, LLC. Hey, they got a proven track record. They just had an update so you can import photos. Hey, I think this will only get better. So I hope you like the demo.
Jeff Thompson:
But check out other demonstrations. We did one on Envision AI. We did one on [inaudible]. We did one on Seeing AI, Prismo, Prismo Go, and I’m sure a few other so check ’em out. You can find them in our extensive library. We’re nearing 500 podcasts now. So check ’em out on www.blindabilities.com. Follow us on Twitter at Blind Abilities. And download the free Blind Abilities App from the App Store and the Google Play Store. That’s two words, Blind Abilities.
Jeff Thompson:
A big shout out to Chee Chau for his beautiful music. You can follow Chee Chau on Twitter @LCheeChau, Chee Chau, Chee Chau.
Jeff Thompson:
Thanks for listening and until next time, buh-bye.
Speaker:
Five, four, three, two, one.
[Music] [Transition noise] -When we share
-What we see
-Through each other’s eyes…
[Multiple voices overlapping, in unison, to form a single sentence]
…We can then begin to bridge the gap between the limited expectations, and the realities of Blind Abilities.
Jeff Thompson:
For more podcasts with the blindness perspective:
Check us out on the web at www.BlindAbilities.com On Twitter @BlindAbilities
Download our app from the App store:
‘Blind Abilities’; that’s two words.
Or send us an e-mail at:
info@blindabilities.com
Thanks for listening.
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