Hi Paul,

Your basic instincts are correct, however, they are correct from a sighted
person's context. Kurzweil is an OCR/reading environemnt. It provides the
user with tools for reading not just for performing OCR and makes scanning
easier for visually impaired (auto-detecting top of page, announcing blank
pages, skipping over repeated headers and footers, allows the user to
renumber pages, eliminates graphics, reorganizes multi-column text, etc.)
For example, Kurzweil allows you to summarize a document based on keywords,
skim a document by selected unit, bookmark, extratc bookmarked text,
navigate by visual landmarks (page number for example), etc. JAWS and
Omnipage are not a substitute for kurzweil. However, a blind user does more
than scan and read, therefore, JAWS is also required.

Bill
----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Chapin" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, July 31, 2001 4:36 PM
Subject: Re: New Book Published On Adaptive Computing


> We're looking at software for help a blind student do course readings.
One
> option being considered is the Kurzweil 1000 that will scan and read
printed
> material.  Another alternative is to use a standard OCR package like
> OmniPage combined with JAWS.  My impression, based on limited experience,
is
> that while the Kurzweil may be very good at what it does, it wouldn't help
> with doing anything else on the computer and we would probably need JAWS,
or
> something like it, anyway.  The OmniPage and JAWS combination has the
> advantage that JAWS can handle other requirements beyond just reading
> scanned text, but since OmniPage is not optimized for screen reading it
may
> be a little harder to work with.
>
> Are my basic impressions correct and does anyone have any additional
> comments or suggestions?
>
> ------
> Paul Chapin
> Curricular Computing Specialist
> Amherst College
> 413 542-2144
>