Title AN EVALUATION OF THE BENEFITS OF COMPUTER READING MACHINES FOR THE BLIND
IN THE NAME OF THE MOST HIGH Research 2 Title: AN EVALUATION OF THE BENEFITS OF COMPUTER READING MACHINES FOR THE BLIND Student : Amirhosein Soleimani Topic List This paper consists of the following topics and titles: Introduction Further Details and Explanations The history of the Kurzweil Reading Machine Collaboration with the NFB The Announcement of the KRM The Relationship with Xerox A New Company Kurzweil Educational Systems, Inc. (KESI) Moores Law The Price - Performance Improvement in Reading Machines What the Future Holds Features at A Glance What is Kurzweil 1000? ... About Synthetic Speech About Reading in Kurzweil 1000 About Editing in Kurzweil 1000 About Kurzweil 1000 Settings About Bookmarks ZIP File Support Using Ranked Spelling Measuring Reading Performance Unaided Reading Performance Effect of the Computer Reading Machine on Reading Speed Effect of the Computer Reading Machine on Comprehension Effect of the Computer Reading Machine on Endurance Participant Evaluation of the kurzweil Computer Reading Machine Conclusion References Introduction Blind people who are poor readers because of inability to use the Braille system and taped materials effectively, dyslexia, or other reasons report that reading is slow, inaccurate, and hard work. To extract meaning from text, they usually find that they have to proceed slowly, re-read passages frequently, struggle to decode unfamiliar words, and interrupt their reading frequently to recover from fatigue and stress. Since they read slowly and intermittently, reading takes them much more time than it does their peers in college. As a result, the quantity of material that they read is small, and since they get much less practice reading, they have less opportunity to improve their reading skills. Students with these difficulties often do not have the time, energy, or motivation to read course material and often must depend upon family or tutors to help them with their reading. ... At college, unlike school, the amount of reading required is greater and family support is often less available, and they may simply run out of time to complete their work. Many people with poor reading skills, including blind students, have a relatively good ability to handle spoken language. ... For these people specially students who want to enter university courses without Persian or Arabic sources, computer reading machines can be of great help. Since, as a blind college student who studies English literature, Ive been using these products for more than two years, I decided to conduct a research to prove their benefits systematically through some closer look at their functionalities. Its quite evident that computer reading technology is capable of revolutionizing the way with which blind students can continue their studies, but this fact should be corroborated quite methodically by taking a look at its history, features, and benefits. The major tool that helps the blind continue their studies has, for a long time, been the Braille system. No one can deny the influence it made, and is still making, on the lives of the blind, but the fact is that, for instance, Braille literacy is on the decline in the United States of America. ... Furthermore, concerning the English Braille systems which are popular today (Literary, Computer-Code, Music, Grade 1, Grade 2), reaching the recommended competitive reading speed of 200 words per minute seems to be quite possible only with Braille Grade 2 which uses contractions for some words and widely-used letter combinations. So, technology has answered this challenge and now we have very advanced, complicated but easy-to-use computer reading machines that, even most pessimistically speaking, at least concerning languages such as English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish, are on the brink of replacing the old systems of reading and writing for the blind: the Braille system, and audiocassettes. Computer reading machines can effortlessly increase the reading speed up to even 350 words per minute (or more if necessary). My research shouldnt be construed an article against previously-invented methods or instruments, its just an evaluation of a somewhat newly-born approach, its history, features and benefits. I just want to confirm its effects particularly what it can do to enhance the reading skills. ... Further Details and Explanations Computer reading machines convert printed text into speech. ... A computer reading machine can speak essentially any text, and current systems do so with excellent fidelity. By using a computer reading machine, a person with poor reading skills, but good receptive language skills, can listen to the text as well as see it on the computer monitor and may be able to "read" faster, with better comprehension, and with less stress and fatigue. Computer reading machines can handle text from almost any good quality printed document (e. ... , books and magazines) by means of a scanner, or from computer documents such as those created with word processors, electronic mail, or on web pages. ... Computer text simply needs to be converted from the format used by the program that created it (e. ... Computer reading machines designed for people with reading disabilities show the page to be read on the computer monitor while it is spoken. ... Providing the user with this synchronized visual and auditory presentation of the text in the document is a key idea of computer reading machines. Computer reading machines offer considerable flexibility in how information is presented. ... As a result, these products were limited largely to reading simple documents such as novels. They were difficult or unsatisfactory to use for reading history, science, and other text books which have many illustrations, complex layouts and text formatting. ... The compensatory effectiveness of optical character recognition/speech synthesis on reading comprehension of post-secondary students with learning disabilities. ... ) This limitation was overcome in 1997 when Kurzweil Educational Systems introduced a product, the Kurzweil 1000 (Kurzweil, 1997), in which an image of the actual page with pictures, graphics, page layout, and text formatting faithfully reproduced in color is shown on the computer monitor. ... This product is effective for reading complex materials such as text books. ... ) As stated in my proposal, the history, features, and efficacy of one of these computer reading machines, the "Kurzweil 1000 version 6.0", in enhancing reading performance of a group of blind college students whose major field is English will be investigated here. Since these computer-reading machines cannot convert Persian (Farsi) printed texts into speech, I had to choose those students who study English. The results of this study which will be presented in this research include models that can be used to predict the enhancement in reading performance that individuals can expect based upon tests of unaided reading and oral language skills. Several factors affecting the reading experience, with or without this computer-reading machine, including speed and comprehension will be discussed, but first, it is necessary to take a closer look at this highly-specialized software, its history, and capabilities. ... Sequentially, Ill concentrate on the following areas and major topics: The history of Kurzweil reading machine Kurzweil 1000 features at a glance Measuring reading performance Conclusion The following is taken from an article written by Ray Kurzweil, who is the inventor of the first reading machine. ... It takes a look at the history of reading machines in general, and the Kurzweil reading machine in particular. The History of the Kurzweil Reading Machine In 1974 I started a company, Kurzweil Computer Products, Inc. ... We attacked what at that time was regarded as a classical (and unsolved) problem in pattern recognition which was teaching a computer to identify printed characters regardless of the type font they were printed in, the size of print, quality of print and other characteristics. Computer systems existed that could recognize printed letters if they were printed in a special type font (e. ... Solving this problem required us to teach the computer how to abstract the essential qualities of the concepts behind each letter. ... We did some market research and quickly came upon the problem of accessing ordinary print by blind and visually impaired persons. Braille was (and continues to be) a vitally important medium which provides full literacy to blind persons as a system for both reading and writing. ... It quickly became clear that a print-to-speech reading machine could overcome this handicap associated with the disability of visual impairment. It would provide another important tool along with Braille to enable blind persons to compete fully with their sighted peers. There were several other key technology hurdles that we needed to face in order to create the worlds first print-to-speech reading machine. ... A vital issue in creating the worlds first print-to-speech reading machine was to gain an understanding of how to organize these resources in a machine and how to connect the user to these capabilities in an intuitive fashion. ... As it turns out the National Federation of the Blind ("NFB") played a critical role in helping our small organization in both of these areas. ... One was Jim Gashel, who was then (and still is) the head of the Washington office of the National Federation of the Blind. ... I had the opportunity in 1975 to review my plans for the worlds first print-to-speech reading machine with Dr. ... They agreed to work with me to help find funding for this effort if I agreed to involve the NFB, and in particular its blind engineers and scientists, in the design of the reading machine, its user interface and controls, and help to evaluate and refine all aspects of its operation and functions. ... " As it turned out, this collaboration between Kurzweil Computer Products, Inc. and the National Federation of the Blind worked extremely well and in effect killed two birds with one stone. ... The joint KCP - NFB Program also played the key role in creating an effective reading machine from its constituent technologies. It is clear to me that the Kurzweil Reading Machine would not have been an effective tool if it was not for the key insights into its design that were contributed by the NFB scientists and engineers. In fact the design came out quite differently than we had originally expected, and as it turns out, was very well accepted by blind consumers. ... Many of the key ideas that were created in this KCP - NFB collaboration still form the basis of the user interface of all print-to-speech reading machines for the blind today. ... The Announcement of the KRM We announced the Kurzweil Reading Machine at a press conference on January 13, 1976. ... At a subsequent live television demonstration of the reading machine, we were a little nervous because we had only one working prototype at the time. ... This time honored approach to fixing delicate electronic equipment seemed to work, and the reading machine started reading again. ... The Relationship with Xerox In 1978, we introduced a version of the reading system for commercial applications such as word processing and entering data into data bases called the Kurzweil Data Entry Machine ("KDEM"). ... which created the first computer based musical instrument that could recreate the sounds of the grand piano and other orchestral instruments. ... A future goal is to create the opposite of a reading machine - a device which will convert speech into print - so that a deaf person can understand what people are saying. ... I also continued as a consultant to Kurzweil Computer Products, Inc. ... This gave me the opportunity to continue to learn and gain insight into reading machine design and the many technical and user interface issues that arise. ... to create a new generation of reading technology. ... Another is that in these twenty-three years I have gathered insight into the many subtle issues of how to design an effective reading machine that I wanted an opportunity to use and express. ... I have had the opportunity to gather together some of the best minds in this field in both technology and marketing, and we have introduced our first product called KURZWEIL 1000 which represents a new generation of print-to-speech reading machines for the blind. ... The quality of a reading machine can never be better than its OCR. ... Provide a rich array of features such as immediately available dictionary definitions, voice commands, voice prompts, document management, multiple reading "personalities," a voice calculator and many others. ... As soon as you start designing specialized hardware for a disabled population, you lose the price - performance benefits of commodity components. ... KURZWEIL 2000 enlarges print just like a CCTV system, but it does some things that a CCTV is unable to do, including reading the print out loud, highlighting on the image the words that are currently being read, automatically moving the image so that the user does not need to move the book on an X-Y mover, providing on-line dictionary definitions, voice commands, and many other features.