OrCam Introduces Smart Reading Feature

OrCam Technologies has released an interactive Smart Reading feature class for its assistive technology platforms. OrCam's voice-activated Smart Reading feature enables users who are blind, visually impaired, or have reading challenges, including dyslexia, to tailor the assistive reading experience to their specific areas of interest using voice commands.

Smart Reading combines OrCam's advanced computer vision and natural language understanding (NLU) technologies and operates as a voice-activated assistant to make any text, whether in print or digital formats, even more accessible to the reader when using OrCam's text-to-speech reading engine. Activated by the user's voice, the algorithms driving the Smart Reading feature listen to and comprehend the user's requests, retrieve the relevant information, and read the requested text to the user within a few seconds.

"After devoting 10 years of R&D efforts to developing our pioneering OrCam MyEye device, we are proud to now offer the interactive Smart Reading feature, which takes AI-enabled assistive reading to an entirely new level of accessibility for people with visual impairments and those with reading challenges," said Amnon Shashua, OrCam's co-founder and co-CEO, in a statement. "We work tirelessly to create sustainable and long-lasting solutions that set the bar on the level of independence artificial vision technology can provide for people whose access to the world may be restricted, opening up new opportunities and enhancing their quality of life."

To access specific information within text, the user issues simple voice commands, such as: "Read [newspaper] headlines," "Start from vegetarian [menu items]," or "Read amounts [of a bill]." Retrieving only the requested information, Smart Reading powers OrCam's text-to-speech engine, serving as a voice-activated assistant that understands and responds to what the user wants to know.

The Smart Reading feature can be integrated with both the OrCam MyEye and OrCam Read devices. The voice-activated, wearable OrCam MyEye device, for people who are blind or have low vision, instantly reads printed text and digital screens out loud, recognizes faces, and identifies products/bar codes, money notes, and colors. Magnetically mounted on the wearer's eyeglass frames and weighing less than a pund, OrCam MyEye is wearable assistive technology for vision impairment that can be activated by a pointing gesture.

OrCam Read, a handheld digital reader, empowers people with language processing challenges, including dyslexia. Leveraging OrCam's computer vision technology, the lightweight OrCam Read instantly captures and reads out loud full pages of text and digital screens. The device features point-and-click operation, which activates two precision laser guidance options, to read the entire highlighted text or target where to begin reading.

All OrCam products operate in real time and completely offline, thereby ensuring data privacy.

Starkey and OrCam Partner on Assistive Technology

OrCam's MyEye devices are integrated with Starkey's hearing aids to bring audio descriptions to life.

28 Oct 2020