[Athen] AiSquared ZoomReader for iPhone

Karlen Communications info at karlencommunications.com
Tue Apr 12 07:16:51 PDT 2011


I've also found in the last two days that it freezes or crashes frequently.
Although maybe I'm expecting it to be too responsive to touch? When it
freezes or crashes I have to exit the app, give it a few minutes rest before
starting the app again.

It has potential but at the moment you have to be quite patient with it.

Cheers, Karen

-----Original Message-----
From: athen-bounces at athenpro.org [mailto:athen-bounces at athenpro.org] On
Behalf Of Jeffrey Dell
Sent: April-12-11 9:51 AM
To: Access Technology Higher Education Network
Subject: Re: [Athen] AiSquared ZoomReader for iPhone

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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