Neat Stuff from ATIA Part I -- Intel Reader

This is an incredible new portable reading tool from Intel.  Take a picture of a page, [caption id="attachment_101" align="alignright" width="300" caption="The new portable E-reader, the Intel Reader."][/caption] a few seconds later, see it, hear it, read it.  This portable reading tool, works astonishingly well.  No more portable scanners.

This was at the Assistive Technology Industry Association conference in Chicago a few weeks ago.  I'll be highlighting a bunch of new stuff I saw there over the next few entries.

The Intel Reader combines a high-resolution camera with an Intel Atom' processor. Read on the spot, highlighting text on the screen, or store text for later listening.  It can read Daisy files, generate MP3's, transfer files to a PC.

Look for pricing in the next couple of weeks and we'll be getting demo's soon.

And yes this is from that Intel -- the people who make the computer chips that run your life.  Its great to see the big technology manufacturers getting involved in assistive technology again.   Hopefully this means cheaper and better for our space. Integration of AT into broader commercial technology is nothing new (think voice recognition, text to speech, word prediction on the Blackberry). But often functionality for those for whom this technology is a neseccity is stripped out. Perhaps this signifies a different trend.

For an interesting article about why Intel is getting involved in this area check out this blog from the New York Times.