I would like to propose a possible idea for research /development. For a
number of years I have been concerned re the problem of microfishe access
for blind people. I have raised this problem with a washington state
librarian. As you are all aware massive ammounts of very useful data
/information are stored on microfishe in libraries, universities, and
newspaper offices just to name a few. I have obtained several hard copy
print outs from the readers however the quality of the print makes ocr
scanning next to useless. As I am fairly new to the net [2 months]
perhaps this issue has been or is being addressed: but to my knowlage no
adaptive technology companies are researching or working on making
microfishe available to visually impaired persons. I am sure that in the
u.s and possibly in other countries funding for such a project would have
the blessing and perhaps the practical assistence of relevant government
departments. Perhaps software could be developed along the lines of ocr
to take the output of those readers directly instead of being printed and
converted. If this could be accomplished it would not only benifit blind
persons but would be of great assistence for those organizations wishing
to convert their fishe records to computer files, and thus could open up
a very substantual avenue of funding. Due to the nature of the problem
that is converting immages to text I think it could also have the
potential for improving ocr software in general. Many scanner and ocr
software producers claim the acuracy of both are well over 95 percent.
This may be the case if all documents scanned are printed via laser.
However in the real world we all know this is not the case particularly
when faxes on thermal paper are scanned, sorry I digress: however I am
hoping the federation may consider looking at the lack of access to fishe
readers for blind people. Perhaps there may not be a known demand
however if people new how much material is available in this format in
any country I am posative the demand would be fantastic.
Perhaps there are more technical issues to this problem than I am aware
of; I honestily don't think they are in-summountable.
--- End of forwarded message from <nfb-rd@lothlorien.nfbcal.org>
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