[Athen] AiSquared ZoomReader for iPhone

[Jeffrey Dell]

A student of mine and I downloaded it onto his iPhone yesterday.  It
worked nice as a handheld video magnifier, but the scanning and
reading option was terrible.  We were testing it on plain text manuals
that had no glossy surphaces.  We watched the videos on Ai Squared's
website and they did not help much.  We could not get it to recognize
a single word.  The closest thing we got to reading was it was saying
I I I I I I I I I I I I I and You You You You... We thought it had a
studdering problem but nope it just sucked.  The Voice recognition for
commands did not work either.  I was very disappointed.
I really hope that our experience was not the same that most people
are having with it because I really want an app like this to work.  If
i had an iPhone 4 instead of my 3GS I'd get it for the video magnifier
function alone.  That feature was nice and I'm sure that eventually
they will work out whatever bugs we were having.
Jeff

On 4/12/11, Karlen Communications <info at karlencommunications.com> wrote:

> I bought the app and it did well scanning and recognizing the text on the

> back of an iTunes card so I could read the instructions. It did not do well

> on scanning and recognizing the instructions on over the counter medicine

> boxes although the instructions do say that you need to hold the camera

> steady and of course since I was concentrating on holding the camera steady

> it wobbled so I am going back from time to time to try it again but as of

> now, four days later, no luck. The other issue might be that the text on the

> packaging is often red on white or blue on white and is quite small.

>

> They are right about glare and lighting and in a restaurant, despite being

> under a light I couldn't get any information from the menu. To be fair,

> again the menu had a plastic coating and in this case the fonts are not

> plain although they were not script.

>

> I think this is a good tool and this is the first iteration of it which I

> accept.  I'm trying it with anything I can think of to see what it likes and

> what it doesn't. Am also experimenting to see how steady I can hold the

> camera. I don't have a mobility disability or tremors so it is just a matter

> of holding the camera steady at the right distance from the content. Like

> any new tool, it takes some getting used to.

>

> The text recognition on the iTunes card instructions came out quite well

> with only a few OCR mistakes and again I found that steadiness and distance

> from the text affected the OCR.

>

> I like that I can change the contrast for reading and there is a setting to

> automatically read the content once it is recognized but I like to choose

> when to read the text so haven't used this setting yet.

>

> So, for a first iteration of a tool it works well if you can hold the camera

> steady at the right distance from the text. I wouldn't give it a negative

> rating. Once more of us are using it, we can provide some feedback on

> performance but I like the idea of not carrying around a separate device to

> do this.  It is just so easy to use on-board.

>

> Cheers, Karen

>

> -----Original Message-----

> From: athen-bounces at athenpro.org [mailto:athen-bounces at athenpro.org] On

> Behalf Of Sean J Keegan

> Sent: April-12-11 2:16 AM

> To: Access Technology Higher Education Network; Alternate Media

> Subject: [Athen] AiSquared ZoomReader for iPhone

>

> Hi all,

>

> I was following up on recent app releases from CSUN and noticed that

> AiSquared's ZoomReader app for the iPhone was finally approved.  It appears

> to require the iPhone 4 and iOS 4.2 or higher.

>

> http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/zoomreader/id414117816?mt=8

>

> There are two one-star ratings, but it is apparent one person clearly did

> not read the directions and tried installing the app on an iPhone 3GS and

> another person was just negative (no real description as to any problems).

>

> Such an app could be really useful on a form factor the size on an iPad.

>   Unfortunately, the iPad 2 camera is of much lower capability than the

> iPhone 4, so until the iPad 2 camera gets a serious upgrade, it looks like

> this will only be useful for the iPhone 4 device.

>

> If anyone gets the chance to play with this, I would be interested to hear

> your comments.

>

> Take care,

> Sean

>

> --

> Sean Keegan

> Associate Director, Assistive Technology Office of Accessible Education -

> Stanford University http://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/oae

>

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