[fcb-l] FW: [acb-l] Smartphone Cameras and Independence
Deedra Waters
deedra at the-brannons.com
Sat Aug 27 18:53:03 EDT 2011
john R. Vaughn wrote
| Chip, all of this is perplexing. I have the Nokia N82 smart phone with the
| KNFB loaded on it for the ability to scan and have the phone read what I
| have scanned.
| I no longer have a land line, but it costs me $50 per month for the ATT
| basic phone service, then another $30 for the ability to have up to 1400
| minutes of additional phone time per month excluding free nights and
| weekends and time with other family and friends who also use ATT and then
| another $30 per month for an entry level basic data plan. That is $110 per
| month. More than my first $75 per month car payment for a 1966 baby blue
| mustang when I graduated from college in 1966. So you really have to think
| about the $4 per day to enjoy this technology.
I'd recommend getting away from at&t they're the most expensive carrier out there and they're not worth the price they charge. My husband and i are on sprint we pay 160 for 2 phones and data everything you essentially have.
| And then there is the commcast cable TV service. It is $50 per month for
| expanded basic.
| I am thinking about going back to the $15per month basic cable TV. I would
| be glad to hear how others deal with all of this. I also spend $50 per
| month for my commcast internet service. Lot of money for technology and
| communications/entertainment.
| Good news is I do not drive and so have no car payment and I am sure that
| would cost more than $75 per month.
| John
|
| -----Original Message-----
| From: fcb-l-bounces at acb.org [mailto:fcb-l-bounces at acb.org] On Behalf Of Chip
| Orange
| Sent: Saturday, August 27, 2011 4:39 PM
| To: fcb-l at acb.org
| Subject: Re: [fcb-l] FW: [acb-l] Smartphone Cameras and Independence
|
| Hi Mike (and all),
|
| I want to raise another point though: when you speak of "you can get more
| bang for the buck", it's easy to forget that (I'm told by many of my friends
| who have smart phones) that their monthly bill is around $100 a month. And
| their locked into a multi-year contract without being able to get out. And
| at the end, if you don't continue it, all that you've spent your money on to
| obtain this extra independence is gone (well, not all, but quite a bit).
|
| Given how little money most blind people have, I really think we need to
| separate out how impressive these things are (call it the "wow factor"),
| from what's the best financial decision.
|
| I haven't come to a firm unarguable conclusion in my mind yet on this, but I
| do know most blind people can't afford $100 a month; but they can afford to
| save up for the most needed A.T. gadget, and then the next most needed one
| for them, and so on.
|
| Comments on this would be appreciated, as I'm constantly being asked by
| other blind people if I'd recommend a smart phone.
|
| thanks.
|
| Chip
|
|
| -----Original Message-----
| From: fcb-l-bounces at acb.org [mailto:fcb-l-bounces at acb.org] On Behalf Of
| Michael Ullrich
| Sent: Tuesday, August 23, 2011 9:18 AM
| To: fcb-l at acb.org
| Subject: Re: [fcb-l] FW: [acb-l] Smartphone Cameras and Independence
|
| Paul,
|
| One of these days, I'm going to have to start saving up for a smart phone
| and it's service!
|
| It totally amazes me all the app's that can actually help the blind.
| It seems like every day another one comes out.
| You can get more bang for the buck, buying one smart phone and loading it
| with app's. As compared to purchasing separately the many different
| assistive technology products.
| I just have to get over the fear factor of working with touch screens.
|
| I always seem to have a fear factor when first learning about new assistive
| technology. I went through the same thing with JAWS! And now I revel in it!
|
| Thanks for posting this, I most definitely will pass this on to all my
| members.
|
| Thanks,...Mike
|
| Michael D. Ulrich
| President
| Southwest Florida Council of the Blind
| "Providing insight for blindness"
| Home phone: 239-540-7431
| Cell phone: 239-565-5845
|
|
| -----Original Message-----
| From: fcb-l-bounces at acb.org [mailto:fcb-l-bounces at acb.org] On Behalf Of
| Edwards, Paul
| Sent: Tuesday, August 23, 2011 8:47 AM
| To: fcb-l at acb.org
| Subject: [fcb-l] FW: [acb-l] Smartphone Cameras and Independence
|
| I thought folks might find this interesting.
|
| Paul
|
|
| Paul Edwards, Director
| North Campus Access Services
| 11380 Northwest 27 Avenue
| Miami FL33167
| PHONE: (305) 237-1146
| FAX: (305) 237-1831
| CELL PHONE: (305) 984-0909
| HOME PHONE: (305) 692-9206
|
| ABILITY COUNTS
|
|
| -----Original Message-----
| From: acb-l-bounces at acb.org [mailto:acb-l-bounces at acb.org] On Behalf Of
| peter altschul
| Sent: Monday, August 22, 2011 9:26 PM
| To: Acb-l
| Subject: [acb-l] Smartphone Cameras and Independence
|
| Smartphone cameras bring independence to blind people
| 19 August 2011 Last updated at 03:19 ET By Damon Rose Editor, BBC Ouch!
| VizWiz puts out the user's query to a panel of volunteer helpers Snapping
| an image with your smartphone camera brings more than just a pretty picture
| if you are blind. With the right app, it can increase your independence.
| Knowing what food is inside a packet or details about the post which has
| just arrived on your doormat are everyday things that most people take for
| granted.
| Blind people have traditionally sought this kind of visual information
| from family and friends, or from an employed personal assistant. But this
| has meant having to fit in with other people's time or spend significant
| money on help. Now there are an increasing number of alternatives.
| As smart phones become more accessible, some with built in speech and
| Braille output, it is possible for people with sight loss to get slivers of
| visual assistance when there's no one else around to ask.
| Want to know what colour your shirt is? Use a colour detector app. Want
| to know if it is still daylight outside? Use a light detector app. Want to
| read a notice on your work's noticeboard?
| Use a text recognition app, of course.
| What's in this jar? The most recent visual assistance product to hit the
| app store is VizWiz. As well as giving you automated image recognition from
| intelligent software, it throws your questions open to a small band of
| volunteers standing-by on the internet -- a human cloud, willing to donate
| ten seconds of their time here and there to describe photos which come in.
| On its website, the VizWiz is described as: "Take a Picture, Speak a
| Question, and Get an Answer".
| The free app and service, developed by the University of Rochester in New
| York, has received between ten and 12 thousand questions in its first two
| months. The volunteers are made up of staff and students who receive a
| sound alert when a question arrives, either via Twitter, text message or the
| web. They tap in a response which is received by the original sender.
| "The most popular type of question is a product that they have which has
| text written on it, a label with instructions. People want to know what it
| says, how to cook it or when it expires,"
| said Professor Jeff Bigham, the man behind the service.
| "We can very clearly track the time of day," explained Prof.
| Bigham.
| "In the morning people are asking about clothing, the colour or pattern.
| A few people ask if their shirt matches their pants."
| "Around one or two eastern time we start getting questions about wine from
| what we assume is the UK, asking what label, what year, that kind of thing."
| It is this kind of subjective answer that a piece of software can't give
| and that a human service can. But humans need sleep.
| Prof. Bigham admits that, though computer scientists are famed for staying
| up very late, the 6am to 7am timeslot can be a bit difficult to fill with
| volunteers from the university.
| Human cloud "It's a really exciting time to work in access technology. A
| great new resource is that there are people out there on the web. Everyone
| is connected and we can do a lot of interesting things with it," he said.
| "People have been throwing around terms like Human Cloud for a while, and
| Crowd in the Cloud.
| "A lot of work which happened in crowd sourcing before it, took time.
| Like Wikipedia, it 'took time' for articles to emerge.
| What's interesting with our service is the realtime aspect of it.
| Someone out there needs help from the cloud and, in almost real time, they
| get it."
| Users know that it is humans at the other end and this has generated some
| "crazy" questions that could never have been answered by automated
| recognition software.
| "We had one person who kept taking a picture of the sky and asking 'what
| is this` every 5 minutes for a couple of hours,"
| said Prof. Bigham. "I had no idea what was going on. It also happens we
| loosely monitor Twitter. Someone later tweeted 'VizWiz just helped me watch
| the sunset'.was
| Blind photography In a perhaps unexpected 21st century development, blind
| people are now finding they need to learn the basics of photography in order
| to take advantage of the growing number of text and image recognition
| services on smart phones.
| How do you hold the camera up? And how close do you put it to the object
| you want to know more about? Angles, perspective, distance and light, are
| concepts that don't come naturally to people who have never been able to
| see.
| The oMoby app is capable of recognising products from a photograph Steve
| Nutt is an IT consultant in Hertfordshire who has been blind since birth.
| It took him two weeks to master how to frame a shot which he does in a very
| functional way, quite different to how sighted people would do it. He
| explains: "If you're taking a picture of, say, a tin, you need to make sure
| you get the whole tin in there. I would stand it up so you get all the
| sides with the label and snap from about 8 inches above it.
| "If you are taking a picture of some text on a piece of paper, centralise
| the camera and lift it up about ten inches. Keep your hand dead straight
| and dead still when taking the image. "You have to also bear in mind the
| size of the thing you're taking the picture of. the smaller the thing, the
| closer you need to be to it ... I'd be lying if I said it was easy."
| Jeff Bigham's team sees the results of the camerawork coming from users
| like Steve. Not everyone gets it right with their first shot.
| "We definitely get a few attempts sometimes. It's not always easy to
| frame the photos. Sometimes the centre is out of the photo. if they're
| asking what is on a can of soup label, we generally say 'we can't tell what
| this is, the label is likely on the other side of the can'.was
| _______________________________________________
| acb-l mailing list
| acb-l at acb.org
| http://www.acb.org/mailman/listinfo/acb-l
|
| _______________________________________________
| fcb-l mailing list
| fcb-l at acb.org
| http://www.acb.org/mailman/listinfo/fcb-l
| No virus found in this incoming message.
| Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
| Version: 8.5.449 / Virus Database: 271.1.1/3850 - Release Date: 08/22/11
| 06:35:00
|
| _______________________________________________
| fcb-l mailing list
| fcb-l at acb.org
| http://www.acb.org/mailman/listinfo/fcb-l
|
| _______________________________________________
| fcb-l mailing list
| fcb-l at acb.org
| http://www.acb.org/mailman/listinfo/fcb-l
|
| _______________________________________________
| fcb-l mailing list
| fcb-l at acb.org
| http://www.acb.org/mailman/listinfo/fcb-l
---end quoted text---
More information about the fcb-l
mailing list