The survey below was written by users of the Optacon. Invented in the
early 1970's, the Optacon uses a hand-held camera to explore a print
document and convert the picture of what it finds to a small tactile
array composed of vibrating pins. The picture is very tiny--about the
size of a standard print letter or number. The Optacon was manufactured
until the early 1990's.
In 2006 many Optacons are still in use together with today's other
available devices. No single device will satisfy all the needs of any
user. Whatever combination of devices work for you is what you should be
using.
This survey is an unscientific attempt to find out how many other people
might benefit from the Optacon if
it was
more readily available to them. The survey is intended for information
purposes
only. Currently, only a small number of Optacons are readily available. If
this survey's findings indicate that there is an interest in a device that
allows a person to examine print documents as they actually appear without
any interpretation via software or scanner, then possible work could be done
to re-devop the Optacon with more modern parts and ability to read today's
modern types of displays such as DVD, cell phones, mp3 players etc.
In spite of the computers, scanners, speech devices,
Braille displays, etc., available today, the Optacon can perform some
tasks that the other devices perform with difficulty or not at all.
No computer is necessary to use the Optacon. It
runs on electricity and/or batteries and can be taken anywhere.
The main drawbacks are that the Optacon is slow and that it takes an
on-going commitment of time
and patience to learn and to use.
This survey contains fifteen questions relating
to everyday tasks for which the Optacon is used most often. Read the
questions first and then respond
by letting us know if a particular task is a problem in your life. You can
use the question numbers and respond with comments
comments, or, if you prefer you can just
read the questions and send back a general note.
Before we begin, just one last point. The users of the Optacon in no
way intend to suggest by distributing this survey that others would
definitely find the Optacon useful--only that some people with
particular problems dealing with print might find an Optacon a
helful addition to their present ways of doing things.
PLEASE FOLLOW THE REPLY DIRECTIONS AT THE BOTTOM. Thank you for taking the
time to respond.
NOTE: If you have an Optacon that no longer works, it can still
be repaired or rebuilt. Please let us know about this. If you read the
survey and whish to know more about the Optacon, please write. You don't
have to complete the survey to ask for information.
Here are the questions.
1. Do you ever wish you could sort through your mail and
throw away the junk without
waiting for sighted help?
2. If you use a scanner, do you have trouble scanning material
without sighted assistance? Do you find the results confusing or
inaccurate?
3. Do you have problems using reference material for work or
school? Is this causing problems with late assignments or inability to
keep up with co-workers?
4. Have you ever wanted to photocopy or staple a document but
could not tell in what order the pages belonged or which sides of the
pages have print?
5. Do you ever need to wait for sighted help to arrive before you
can take a medicine or prepare a food because you can't read the
instructions?
6. Have you ever been charged late payment fees, or missed an
invitation to an important event because you did not have timely sighted
help?
7. Did you ever wonder if the piece of paper lying in front of
your door was a restaurant menu or an eviction notice? (important or
unimportant)
8. Did you ever want to read print music?
9. Would you find it helpful to be able to mark appliances or
label your CD collection independently?
10. Did you ever want to learn a foreign language with a different
alphabet only to discover that speech recognition didn't really work?
11. Do you know what print looks like? If not, were you ever
curious to know?
12. Would it increase your independence at times if you could do
some of the following tasks without sighted assistance? sign documents,
verify that envelopes and labels you typed or printed were addressed
correctly, examine
private corespodence such as bank statements, tax documents, or insurance
and medical material.
13. Do you ever have to consult reference material that is too
large, too fat, or too complex to be scanned?
14. Do you think that if you could read just a little print
independently, it might expedite things at work, at school, and at home?
please explain.
15. List any other ways in which the inability to read even a
little print is making your life harder than should be necessary.
NOTE: The original advertising for the Optacon focused on reading
novels and using libraries. As you can tell from the above message,
Optacon users find its main advantage in a different set of tasks from
what
the inventors imagined.
Thank you again for responding to the survey.
PLEASE REPLY TO:
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-Catherine Thomas
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-Catherine Thomas
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