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Telesensory Systems
Telesensory Systems, Inc. (TSI) (later'' TeleSensory Corporation'') was an American corporation that invented, designed, manufactured, and distributed technological aids for blind and low vision persons. TSI's products helped visually impaired people work independently with computers and with ordinary printed materials. History The Optacon, TSI's first product, was conceived by Electrical Engineering Professor John G. Linvill as a means for his blind daughter, Candy, to read ordinary print. The Optacon development, led by James C. Bliss, involved dozens of engineers and scientists at Stanford University and at Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International) starting in 1962. Following the successful demonstration of a functional prototype in 1969, TSI was founded in 1970 in Palo Alto, California, USA. TSI developed a line of products for blind people during the 1970s, and expanded into the low vision field in 1984. TSI's products for blind people employed either tactile ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Assistive Technology
Assistive technology (AT) is a term for assistive, adaptive, and rehabilitative devices for people with disabilities and the elderly. Disabled people often have difficulty performing activities of daily living (ADLs) independently, or even with assistance. ADLs are self-care activities that include toileting, mobility (ambulation), eating, bathing, dressing, grooming, and personal device care. Assistive technology can ameliorate the effects of disabilities that limit the ability to perform ADLs. Assistive technology promotes greater independence by enabling people to perform tasks they were formerly unable to accomplish, or had great difficulty accomplishing, by providing enhancements to, or changing methods of interacting with, the technology needed to accomplish such tasks. For example, wheelchairs provide independent mobility for those who cannot walk, while assistive eating devices can enable people who cannot feed themselves to do so. Due to assistive technology, disabled pe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Screen Magnifier
A screen magnifier is software that interfaces with a computer's graphical output to present enlarged screen content. By enlarging part (or all) of a screen, people with visual impairments can better see words and images. This type of assistive technology is useful for people with some functional vision; people with visual impairments and little or no functional vision usually use a screen reader. Use The simplest form of magnification presents an enlarged portion of the original screen content, the 'focus', so that it covers some or all of the full screen. This enlarged portion should include the content of interest to the user and the pointer or cursor, also suitably enlarged. As the user moves the pointer or cursor the screen magnifier should track with it and show the new enlarged portion. If this tracking is jerky or flickers it is likely to disturb the user. Also, the pointer or cursor may not be the content of interest: for example, if the user presses a keyboard shortcuts ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Optical Character Recognition
Optical character recognition or optical character reader (OCR) is the electronic or mechanical conversion of images of typed, handwritten or printed text into machine-encoded text, whether from a scanned document, a photo of a document, a scene-photo (for example the text on signs and billboards in a landscape photo) or from subtitle text superimposed on an image (for example: from a television broadcast). Widely used as a form of data entry from printed paper data records – whether passport documents, invoices, bank statements, computerized receipts, business cards, mail, printouts of static-data, or any suitable documentation – it is a common method of digitizing printed texts so that they can be electronically edited, searched, stored more compactly, displayed on-line, and used in machine processes such as cognitive computing, machine translation, (extracted) text-to-speech, key data and text mining. OCR is a field of research in pattern recognition, artificial intellig ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Refreshable Braille Display
A refreshable braille display or braille terminal is an electro-mechanical device for displaying braille characters, usually by means of round-tipped pins raised through holes in a flat surface. Visually impaired computer users who cannot use a standard computer monitor can use it to read text output. Deafblind computer users may also use refreshable braille displays. Speech synthesizers are also commonly used for the same task, and a blind user may switch between the two systems or use both at the same time depending on circumstances. Mechanical details The base of a refreshable braille display often integrates a pure braille keyboard. Similar to the Perkins Brailler, the input is performed by two sets of four keys on each side, while output is via a refreshable braille display consisting of a row of electro-mechanical character cells, each of which can raise or lower a combination of eight round-tipped pins. Other variants exist that use a conventional QWERTY keyboard for inp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Screen Reader
A screen reader is a form of assistive technology (AT) that renders text and image content as speech or braille output. Screen readers are essential to people who are blindness, blind, and are useful to people who are visual impairment, visually impaired, Illiteracy, illiterate, or have a learning disability. Screen readers are Application software, software applications that attempt to convey what people with normal eyesight see on a Display device, display to their users via non-visual means, like text-to-speech, sound icons, or a Refreshable Braille display, braille device. They do this by applying a wide variety of techniques that include, for example, interacting with dedicated #Accessibility APIs, accessibility APIs, using various operating system features (like inter-process communication and querying user interface properties), and employing hooking techniques. Microsoft Windows operating systems have included the Microsoft Narrator screen reader since Windows 2000, thoug ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Speech Synthesis
Speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech. A computer system used for this purpose is called a speech synthesizer, and can be implemented in software or hardware products. A text-to-speech (TTS) system converts normal language text into speech; other systems render symbolic linguistic representations like phonetic transcriptions into speech. The reverse process is speech recognition. Synthesized speech can be created by concatenating pieces of recorded speech that are stored in a database. Systems differ in the size of the stored speech units; a system that stores phones or diphones provides the largest output range, but may lack clarity. For specific usage domains, the storage of entire words or sentences allows for high-quality output. Alternatively, a synthesizer can incorporate a model of the vocal tract and other human voice characteristics to create a completely "synthetic" voice output. The quality of a speech synthesizer is judged by its similarity to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Haptic Perception
Haptic perception ( gr, haptόs, script=latn, italics=yes "palpable", ''haptikόs'' "suitable for touch") means literally the ability "to grasp something". Perception in this case is achieved through the active exploration of surfaces and objects by a moving subject, as opposed to passive contact by a static subject during ''tactile perception''.Weber, E. H. (1851). ''Die Lehre vom Tastsinne und Gemeingefühle auf Versuche gegründet''. Friedrich Vieweg und Sohn. History The term ''haptik'' was coined by the German Psychologist Max Dessoir in 1892, when suggesting a name for academic research into the sense of touch in the style of that in "acoustics" and "optics". Gibson (1966) defined the haptic system as " e sensibility of the individual to the world adjacent to his body by use of his body". Gibson and others further emphasized what Weber had realized in 1851: the close link between haptic perception and body movement, and that haptic perception is active exploration. The co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chapter 7, Title 11, United States Code
Chapter 7 of Title 11 of the United States Code (Bankruptcy Code) governs the process of liquidation under the bankruptcy laws of the United States, in contrast to Chapters 11 and 13, which govern the process of ''reorganization'' of a debtor. Chapter 7 is the most common form of bankruptcy in the United States. For businesses When a troubled business is unable to pay its creditors, it may file (or be forced by its creditors to file) for bankruptcy in a federal court under Chapter 7. A Chapter 7 filing means that the business ceases operations unless those operations are continued by the Chapter 7 trustee. A Chapter 7 trustee is appointed almost immediately, with broad powers to examine the business's financial affairs. The trustee generally liquidates the assets and distributes the proceeds to the creditors. This may or may not mean that all employees will lose their jobs. When a large company enters Chapter 7 bankruptcy, entire divisions of the company may be sold intac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Screen Readers
A screen reader is a form of assistive technology (AT) that renders text and image content as speech or braille output. Screen readers are essential to people who are blind, and are useful to people who are visually impaired, illiterate, or have a learning disability. Screen readers are software applications that attempt to convey what people with normal eyesight see on a display to their users via non-visual means, like text-to-speech, sound icons, or a braille device. They do this by applying a wide variety of techniques that include, for example, interacting with dedicated accessibility APIs, using various operating system features (like inter-process communication and querying user interface properties), and employing hooking techniques. Microsoft Windows operating systems have included the Microsoft Narrator screen reader since Windows 2000, though separate products such as Freedom Scientific's commercially available JAWS screen reader and ZoomText screen magnifier and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Video Magnifier
Video magnifiers are electronic devices that use a camera and a display screen to perform digital magnification of printed materials. The display screen is usually LCD or a similar flat-screen technology (although older video magnifiers have used CRT displays), and the device usually includes a lamp to illuminate the source material. Video magnifiers are designed to be mostly used by people with low vision that cannot be helped using a conventional magnifying glass. Advantages Magnification range and display size The main benefit of a video magnifier over purely optical magnification is that the video magnifier allows greater magnification across a larger field of view. With optical lenses, the field of meaningful, in-focus view is reduced with increased magnification. Thus, while a "full page magnifier" based on a fresnel lens can span some ( A4), it typically achieves no more than 1.4x magnification (advertised as "2x" if measured by area instead of the scale factor); an asp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blindness
Visual impairment, also known as vision impairment, is a medical definition primarily measured based on an individual's better eye visual acuity; in the absence of treatment such as correctable eyewear, assistive devices, and medical treatment– visual impairment may cause the individual difficulties with normal daily tasks including reading and walking. Low vision is a functional definition of visual impairment that is chronic, uncorrectable with treatment or correctable lenses, and impacts daily living. As such low vision can be used as a disability metric and varies based on an individual's experience, environmental demands, accommodations, and access to services. The American Academy of Ophthalmology defines visual impairment as the best-corrected visual acuity of less than 20/40 in the better eye, and the World Health Organization defines it as a presenting acuity of less than 6/12 in the better eye. The term blindness is used for complete or nearly complete vision loss. In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
