What did Santa bring you for Christmas? Does it matter to me? Not really, so long as you were blessed with warmth, a roof over your head and peace all round.
Lucky me though, I woke up on Christmas morning to find an OrCam reader sitting upon the credenza – what a lucky boy I am! Or so I believed…
To anyone considering stumping up for an OrCam reader or undergoing the humiliation and pain associated with making an application to Access to Work for the funding for such a piece of assistive technology hear me out; as despite the heavy marketing and constant trade show demonstrations of this technology, there remains some fundamental disadvantages with the OrCam reader.
I am not going to go into endless criticisms of the technology specifications compared with alternative solutions readily available, but I will touch on the obvious bug bears that I have personally experienced.
Cast your minds back, remember the dreaded “The page appears to be blank?” The alert spoken by the KNFB reader when either the page that was scanned was blank or handwritten. Sadly we have something very similar, but this time the OrCam reader tells us that “light levels are too low” which all in all, sounds pretty resolvable; but, despite ensuring every light in the room is switched on, and for extra peace of mind, even turning on my iPhone torch and directing it at the page of text. Yes, you’ve guessed it “light levels are too low” remains the default alert. I even went to the trouble of using the torch on my iPhone, but alas to no avail. I might have well saved myself the considerable outlay associated with purchasing an OrCam reader and stuck with my trusted iPhone with a seeing AI app ):
No doubt once the distributors and sales representatives for the OrCam reader pick up on my small review, then I will be told the error of my ways. But wait, there’s more. As clambering onto my pedestal isn’t as easy for me as it was when I was younger, and far mouthier, I have some more. The concept of reading a book; whilst being familiar to some, is sadly not as ‘plug & play’ to all. OK, so, even a brown bear may pick up on that a book reads from left to right. Do you understand the protocol of the publishers when deciding on what pages they will start printing on? I’m sure don’t, and if I believe what my OrCam read is alerting me too, it appears that either no print is being seen or worse, it’s lying to me.
Come on OrCam!
Anyhow, I am struggling on with my book: enemy coast ahead a memoir by Guy Gibson DSO with bar, Vc and either the book is so badly edited, or something is again not working for me as sold. “Skip 6 lines of text” What the hell does that mean? I feel that I am missing so much of the content of each page as it is so confusing and really doesn’t make sense. For what I have paid for your technology, it could have a lot more functionality built in to help people like me.
By: Colin Fowler (January 2024)