This is an intrigueing idea that will surely come to fruition, in due
time. It is a matter that will become increasingly attractive to the
non-handicapped communities. It may take a few more years before image
processing software reaches pracitcality for this application.
I will be interested in the comments of others on this list.
Tim Cranmer
On Fri, 25 Aug 1995, Brian Buhrow wrote:
> 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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