Thirty-six years ago, Ben Foss conceived of a device that could read out text from printed pages to help him with his dyslexia. Now Foss is shipping the product in his role as director of access technology for Intel's Digital Health group.
The Intel Reader is a paperback-sized device that can take a picture of printed text with its 5 megapixel camera and convert it to speech. The company hopes the US$1,499 system will serve millions of people who have dyslexia or have difficulty seeing printed text.
The Intel Reader is the third system launched by the Digital Health group, which Intel launched about five years ago to address emerging opportunities in medical electronics. Like its predecessors, the Intel Reader is a vehicle for the company's chips. It uses an Atom processor and 4 GB Intel flash drive as well as Intel's Moblin mobile Linux operating system. The 4 GB card can hold 600 processed pages or 500,000 raw text pages.
Intel designed the device, has it built by contract manufacturers, and has agreements to sell it through a handful of specialty dealers in the U.S. who cater to people with reading impediments. They include CTL, Don Johnston Inc., GTSI, Howard Technology Solutions, and HumanWare.
The Intel Reader aims to address a wide variety of ad hoc reading needs from books and newspapers to instructions and posters. Some existing electronic readers have text-to speech software, but they don't support full speech-based menus or enlarge font sizes the way the Intel Reader does, according to Foss.
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