Accessibility: Meet TextScout, the Mobile reading assistant.

elumo, a developer of innovative aids for blind and visually impaired people, launches its first brand new product, TextScout, speech empowered with Acapela voices.

Designed to help visually impaired people to access written information of all types while on the go, TextScout turns a mobile phone into a mobile reading assistant.

The smart application uses the built-in camera of the mobile phone to capture the text, scan it and turn it into speech to read it to the user, giving him a precious hand to deal with pervasive written information. Acapela text to speech comes in to turn the scanned information into pleasant speech and providing to the end user the audio result of the information he needs.‘TextScout recognizes all kinds of printed documents, whatever the text and the format are, including letters, price tags, shopping receipts, invoices, flyers, business cards, magazines, restaurant menus, etc.  The end user listens to the vocalisation of the written information he needs easily, quickly and autonomously.

The high quality and naturalness of Acapela speech synthesis contributes significantly to make TextScout a daily companion that users will adopt and live with’ says Christian Bott, managing director of elumo.Easy to use features such as the alignment assistant, anti-shake protection and image quality feedback help the user to obtain good reading results.

‘We are very happy to give the say to TextScout which invents a new affordable and innovative way to ease the life of people living with visual difficulties. Acapela voices once again demonstrate how speech synthesis can contribute to speech animate Accessibility smart interfaces with natural and pleasant voices’ says Lars-Erik Larsson, Acapela Group CEO.

TextScout is already available in German and English and new languages will be added soon.

For more information: http://www.elumo.net