Comments for BlindGadget

Comment on XKCD Web Comic #1089: Internal Monologue by Jesse the K

Jesse the K — Sat, 03 Dec 2016 01:43:51 +0000

Yay! You’re back.

Comment on XKCD Web Comic #1041: Whites of Their Eyes (described) by xkcd fan

xkcd fan — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 17:57:11 +0000

Thanks for doing this, i could not for the life of me figure out what the ‘sweetness of their ups’ was. OHHH LIPS. thanks

Comment on Delay on XKCD Web Comic #980: Money by Jesse Kaysen

Jesse Kaysen — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 23:16:47 +0000

Thanks for letting us know. I’ve been eagerly awaiting, since my sode-straw vision is useless for the tasks. Best wishes!

Comment on XKCD Web Comic #979: Wisdom of the Ancients (described) by Jesse Kaysen

Jesse Kaysen — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 17:36:48 +0000

What’s the number again? Both this one and the previous are labelled 978.

(Love your service!)

Comment on XKCD Web Comic #972: November (described) by tom

tom — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 14:53:33 +0000

I don’t get it

Comment on Vocalyze Text-to-Speech Gets Your News and Twitter Feeds Talking by Frank Qiu

Frank Qiu — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 15:53:52 +0000

The iPhone app has been updated with an enhanced feature: The new feature is to change the progression in the audio through the scroll bar. In the audio player screen, select the scroll bar which reads “xy%, adjustable, swipe up or down to adjust the value”. Each swipe up or down will adjust the audio position forward/backward by 5%.

Please check it out and let us know if you have any questions. If you like the app, please give us a rating and review, to go with the update.

Frank
Vocalyze Support Team

Comment on HumanWare’s New Brailliant 40 Braille Display by John Ramm

John Ramm — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 08:34:44 +0000

I live in the UK and have just managed to obtain a Brailliant BI 40 through the government’s Access to Work scheme.
First, let me say that I’m disappointed with Humanware for not changing the name of this device in some way. I was looking around for a display early in the summer and I specifically wanted one with keyboard input. If someone hadn’t told me about the input keys on this new Brailliant I would never have even considered it because, as we all know, the Brailliant doesn’t have keyboard input, does it? I mentioned this to HW at the Sight Village show in the UK, as did many others, but they have taken no notice. It seems to me that, in functionality at least, this new device is more similar to a Braille Connect than a Brailliant, but so it goes. I hope HW don’t lose sales because of this strange and inexplicable oversight.
Now to the unit – I love it! It has both USB and Bluetooth connectivity and quotes a battery life of 25-30 hours with Bluetooth or 100 hours with USB. That would have to be unpowered USB though because it will charge from a USB connection if it can.
Your article above states, as does the Brailliant companion CD, that the BI is compatible with Window-Eyes 7.51. This may be true “out of the box” but I am running Window-Eyes 7.2 and I have obtained a couple of files from GW-Micro which have given me the ability to use my BI 40 with Window-Eyes 7.2 – thanks GW!
If anyone’s seen the Brailliant units you may remember that there are three command keys arranged vertically at either end of the braille display, rather like two halves of a braille cell. These were previously only used for display tasks, I believe, but now they can be used as extra input keys giving a total of nineteen or twenty keys to play with, depending on whether or not the unit can distinguish between the two spacebars or not. This gives a massive amount of key combinations and I am very hopeful that I will be able to control all the functions of my computer via Bluetooth without ever having to touch the computer again – no more hot legs!
Whoever manages to get hold of one of these units is in for a treat!

Comment on Jaws 13 Convenient OCR Hands-On by Gene

Gene — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 19:26:14 +0000

Before ascribing motives to companies such as that they are protecting other programs, serious consideration should be given to other valid possibilities. If I were implementing Convenient OCR, I would not make virtualization available. Doing so may violate copyright protection of those who want to restrict documents from being duplicated. While often, PDF documents are protected in ways that deny accessibility for no valid reason, there are legitimate copyright concerns.

Also, common sense and logic indicate that FS is not concerned with virtualization as a means to protect Openbook. JAWS is providing OCR for information on screen, not from books or documents. Even in the case of PDF documents, the ability of JAWS does not extend to entire documents, just to what is on screen at that moment. the uses of the OCR abilities in Openbook are intended for entirely different purposes.

In short, before accusing businesses of questionable motives, other plausible explanations need to be sought and it needs to be asked whether an anticorporate or anticompany bias is influencing results.

Comment on Jaws 13 Will Include Integrated OCR by Vincent Young

Vincent Young — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 19:32:56 +0000

Way to go Freedom… way to go.

Comment on Jaws 13 Will Include Integrated OCR by Tom

Tom — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 11:54:54 +0000

Have you tried SmartOCR yet? It is a new software application which offers over 99.8 percent accuracy and has a very nice interface. http://smartocr.com

Comment on Portable OCR: Will the iPhone 5 Save the day? by James Gashel

James Gashel — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 15:32:20 +0000

While it is obviously desireable to have the knfbReader Mobile available on the iPhone, we don’t want to sacrifice text recognition quality for the expediency of having an iOS app. The problem is not camera resolution, although we are hoping that may improve image quality with the iPhone 5. A bigger issue is insufficient control over camera settings as compared to the ability to control the camera to a greater extent in the symbian phones now running the knfbReader Mobile. While it remains to be seen if iOS 5 will provide improved ability to control the camera, we are hoping that might be the case.