OrCam Read - Artificial Intelligence (AI) Assistive Reader - Including Smart Reading Feature - for Anyone Who is Exposed to Large Amounts of Text at School, Work, or on The Go

Hand held device. After pressing the on/off button to switch on, it takes a little too long before it announces, in a rather electronic jerky voice that it is ready to use. Long enough for a confused elderly person to think it hasn't worked, so you press again, but that just switches it off. That in itself was confusing for my elderly and non-tech savvy mother-in-law.When it does eventually tell you it is ready to operate, you need to point the device at the text you wish it to read. 4 angled red lights will beam onto the page. You need to position these fine red lights over the outer corners of the passage of text you wish it to read. Press the raised + sign and the device will take a picture of the text that appears within the 4 red markers, just like using a camera. Trouble is, not all visually impaired people can see the red lights. My mother-in-law could just about see them but she lacked coordination and hand eye coordination to line up the passage of text within the 4 markers.In addition, being visually impaired, she had no idea how far away to hold the paper. She thought she could see the red lines but it was obvious she lacked the skill to be able to see all 4 lines at the same time and kept holding the paper too close in an attempt to see it.Then came the next problem. The device basically takes a camera shot of the text. Try reading a food packet, even a modern day letter or gas bill. The text is often displayed in columns. The device doesn't know this, it reads from left to right across how ever many columns there are. It reads a page from a story book ok, but it's no good for letters, recipe books, food packaging.The device has the ability to listen to a few voice commands. You can ask it to read the date for example. We had hoped this would help to read sell by dates, and dates on letters. Unfortunately, the device looks at all numbers that appear on the page and reads any combination of every number, making no sense at all.We were all quite surprised by how bad this device is. It sounds great on paper but the technology just isn't there. In this day and age, I am sure a clever boffin would be able to program it to be more sophisticated. As it is, and coming from a technical background ourselves, we cannot understand the poor functionality nor the extortionate price. Perhaps it would suit those who are very capable in every way, other than sight, or people who have difficulty with reading in general, but with age, there often comes a lack of hand/eye coordination and the ability to think and reason quickly. For those people, unfortunately, this device is not suitable, in our opinion.

My friend who has macular bought the Orcam Read. It has changed her life. Her vision was so bad magnifiers were no longer useful. She can now read newspapers and letters. If you download the freeview tv guide it reads it better than reading the guide on the tv. it reads your tablet or phone easily. You can change the voice or speech speed.The instructions that come with it are very basic so download the manual. It's very descriptive and easy to follow.As one person remarked they are expensive but you pay for what you need. This is advanced technology.

The cost is just astonishing. A device that can free up people struggling with dyslexia, set at a tag of £2,220 - at a time when people can barely afford to heat their homes (or, increasingly, eat) - is truly appalling.From a materials/production point-of-view, that's pretty obscene and simply not justified.

You must be insane to buy one of those things. For people that want something like that just get an iPhone take a picture of the text then you can get the phone to read it back. No need for one of those things and you have a phone. Look at the picture it took 10 seconds and it will read the page.