[Athen] OCR for Handwriting Recognition

[Shelley Haven]

Hi, Sean!

There's always the Ink (aka Inkwell) utility built into the Mac OS (see System Preferences), though I haven't had much practical luck with it.  (Then again, my handwriting is atrocious. ;-)

The Modbook, by Axiotron (www.axiotron.com), is a MacBook retrofitted with a Wacom touchscreen to turn it into "the one and only Mac tablet" according to the company.  They developed Quickscript handwriting recognition software to support tablet input, but it turns out you can also purchase it separately ($39):
http://www.axiotron.com/index.php?id=quickscript

I've used Quickscript with an older Wacom Graphire tablet and my MacBook and am very impressed with the results.  It recognizes cursive, printing, and combinations, works with 26 different languages, and supports gesture recognition.  It uses the same Vision Objects handwriting recognition engine as Livescribe's MyScript.

Perhaps not exactly what you're looking for, but definitely worth considering (they have a 30-day free trial).

- Shelley

_____________________________
Shelley Haven  ATP, RET
Assistive Technology Consultant
www.TechPotential.net



On May 26, 2011, at 1:47 PM, Sean J Keegan wrote:


> Hello all,

> 

> Has anyone used an OCR package for handwriting recognition?  I have a student who wants to use this solution to digitize handwritten notes (he is unable to use a computer for any length of time, but does computer programming).  The student uses a Mac and I am not aware of any mainstream applications for that platform that support handwriting recognition.

> 

> I have considered recommending the use of a Livescribe Pen and then use the MyScript app for the handwriting recognition, but he was not thrilled about this solution.  From what I have gathered, the desire is to write out the actual code and then have this "recognized" into text that he can copy/paste into programs.

> 

> Thanks for any suggestions.

> 

> Take care,

> Sean

> 

> -- 

> Sean Keegan

> Associate Director, Assistive Technology

> Office of Accessible Education - Stanford University

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

> _______________________________________________

> athen-list mailing list

> athen-list at mailman1.u.washington.edu

> http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/athen-list

>