Still better Windows text-to-speech
Balabolka adds new features to free text-to-speech for Windows. You can import all kinds of files, set the voice characteristics you want, change the speed and emphasis, etc., then export the results as audio files, say for an mp3 player. Note that this is not a screen reader — it’s a utility for producing better-than-average synthetic speech for almost any text you have.
Balabolka Enhances Windows Text-to-Speech with Reading Styles and Audio Export
Ear yesterday, ear today, ear tomorrow
Turns out the human ear doesn’t change much over the course of the human lifetime, plus each pair is unique. That makes your auricles and lobes prime targets for biometric systems. Assuming you still have ‘em, of course.
Gizmodo: Clean Your Ears Because Airport Security Might Soon Be Scanning Them
Diminished Reality
We’ve covered augmented reality interfaces, where a video image is superimposed with additonal content, such as the history of a building your camera is pointed at. Now researchers at the Technische Universität in Ilmenau, Germany are going the other way — removing objects from the camera’s output, in real time. This might work well as a wayfinding interface for people with low vision or cognitive disabilities. Imagine a street scene with all the signs still there, but none of the bustling, distracting people. Like a 10 megapixel neutron bomb.
Gizmodo: Magic Software Eliminates Objects From Reality Itself
Directions For Me
Small-footprint CCTV-type devices are blooming all over to provide people with visual disabilities magnified or audio access to product labels. However, this may be an involved process, especially if the labels are located in odd places–no one wants to be crawling all over a mattress, for example, just to get a shot of the “Do not remove under penalty of having bedbugs sprinkled in your hair” tag. Enter Directions For Me, a website that lists the product label information for food, health and beauty products, and a miscellaneous set of other consumables. This lets anyone pull up relevant product information on a smartphone or tablet during or even before their shopping trip. Buyer paradise? Well, yes, if Horizons for the Blind, the sponsoring non-profit, has continued funding to add, modify, or delete information on a regular basis. Fingers firmly crossed.