[fcb-l] FW: [acb-l] Smartphone Cameras and Independence
Debbiedrylie
debbiedrylie at gmail.com
Sun Aug 28 17:45:53 EDT 2011
I do not know enough about other smart phones to answer that question.
Sent from my iPhone
On Aug 27, 2011, at 18:14, "Chip Orange" <lists3717 at comcast.net> wrote:
> Hi Debbie,
>
> loving it isn't in question; I can se how cool they are, and everyone seems
> to love them.
>
> What I was asking is, are they such a good idea for someone on SSI or maybe
> SSDI for instance? Mike's statement that they gave you more bang for the
> buck as far as performing accessibility functions, made me wonder about
> this.
>
> Sure, someone with more than enough money is going to love their techno toys
> no matter what they are; but someone with little money is likely getting a
> cell plan include with either part of SSI or food stamps, and so, is it
> the right thing to encourage them to sign up for $80 to $100 a month? that
> was the issue I wanted to mention.
>
> Chip
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: fcb-l-bounces at acb.org [mailto:fcb-l-bounces at acb.org] On Behalf Of
> Debbiedrylie
> Sent: Saturday, August 27, 2011 5:56 PM
> To: fcb-l at acb.org
> Subject: Re: [fcb-l] FW: [acb-l] Smartphone Cameras and Independence
>
> I love my iPhone! My bill is under 80 dollars per month, but I do not have
> texting.
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Aug 27, 2011, at 15:39, "Chip Orange" <lists3717 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
>> 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 _______________________________________________
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