John Mattioli asks about the "seeing eye" software

> Two interesting things about this posting...
> 1. The software is free for download: really, from where?
> I'd love to see it.

The direct download URL for The vOICe Learning Edition
"seeing eye" software for Windows-95/98/NT is

   http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Peter_Meijer/voice.exe

This software requires a PC camera to run, or else you will
only get a spoken error message saying "I'm sorry, The vOICe
cannot find your webcam". PC cameras nowadays typically cost
less than $100. The software download is less than 600K in
size, and is provided at no charge and no obligations whatsoever.
I only request the favour of receiving e-mail with feedback about
your experiences with the software. Many improvements have been
implemented in recent months, and development is still ongoing,
in particular in trying to improve compatibility with popular
screen readers such as Jaws for Windows.

> 2. A built in color identifier? Really? You mean I can download
> this software, purchase a camera and have a color identifier? Cool!

Yes.

Recognized colors include red, green, blue, cyan, yellow,
orange and magenta, as well as combination colors. The
color identification mode is activated by pressing function
key F10, and the color name will be spoken by a human voice.

The main aim and ambition of The vOICe technology is to
provide full access to any kind of visual information.
By default it therefore generates so-called "soundscapes"
that contain much of the visual information of the camera
images. Because there is normally a lot of information in
each image, it uses a scanning approach: images are scanned
from left to right, each scan lasting about one second.
During such a one-second scan, the stereo sound pans from
left to right as well, to ease the perception of each scan.
Furthermore, visual height is translated into pitch: the
higher an object, the higher the pitch. The brighter an
object, the louder its sound. A bright, diagonal line
stretching upward to the right just produces a loud
"ooiieep" rising-pitch sound and another stretching
downward to the right makes the opposite sound, "eeiioop".
With two lines you will hear two tones, and so forth.

Although the image to sound translation rules are both
simple and general, learning to understand the complicated
soundscapes of real-life images can be very hard and will
require extensive training: vision itself happens to be
complicated. So the disadvantage of providing full access
to vision is now that you are exposed to the full complexity
of vision, through your ears. Currently it is not known if
blind users can learn to handle complicated visual information
provided through their ears. It will definitely require a lot
of endurance in training, and the final level of performance
is unknown. Technically, the preservation of a lot of visual
information in the soundscapes has been proven, so you need
not worry about that, but it is the human factors that we
know much less about. This is the greatest challenge that we
are currently facing. However, The vOICe technology offers
by far the most affordable means for general access to visual
information.

Some example sounds that you can listen to are provided in
WAV sound format on the web page

   http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Peter_Meijer/voiswall.htm

giving the sound of a bright wall with a gate, and the web page

   http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Peter_Meijer/voiscope.htm

demonstrating the sound of two oscilloscope screen images.

If you have an MP3 sound player, you can also try the MP3
sound samples at

   http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Peter_Meijer/winoandm.htm

File size is only 16K per MP3 sample here. Make sure that
your MP3 player runs in autorepeat mode, or the soundscapes
will be over before you realize it <g>. The sixteen MP3
samples correspond to a panoramic overview with photographs
of buildings, trees and other visual things converted into
sound using The vOICe Learning Edition software.

Most of the information about software installation and
usage can be found at the two web pages

   http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Peter_Meijer/winvoice.htm
   http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Peter_Meijer/winvoic2.htm

Final note: I will be leaving for my holidays today, but I
will gladly answer any further questions after I return in
the first week of January.

Merry Christmas!

Peter Meijer


E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Soundscapes from The vOICe - Seeing with your Ears!
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Peter_Meijer/


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