Tag: smart phones

Exploring the use of smartphones and tablets among people with visual impairments: Are mainstream devices replacing the use of traditional visual aids?: Assistive Technology: Vol 0, No 0, by Natalina Martiniello

Dear GTT Blog readers.  I urge you all to check out this well done report by Natalina Martiniello and how it impacts the community of blind, partially sighted and deaf-blind people.  You will find the website to be well marked with Heading navigation, so click the below link with confidence.

 

ABSTRACT

 

Smartphones and tablets incorporate built-in accessibility features, but little is known about their impact within the visually impaired population. This

study explored the use of smartphones and tablets, the degree to which they replace traditional visual aids, and factors influencing these decisions. Data

were collected through an anonymous online survey targeted toward visually impaired participants above the age of 18, whom had been using a smartphone

or tablet for at least three months. Among participants (n = 466), 87.4% felt that mainstream devices are replacing traditional solutions. This is especially

true for object identification, navigation, requesting sighted help, listening to audiobooks, reading eBooks and optical character recognition. In these

cases, at least two-thirds of respondents indicated that mainstream devices were replacing traditional tools most or all of the time. Users across all

ages with higher self-reported proficiency were more likely to select a mainstream device over a traditional solution. Our results suggest that mainstream

devices are frequently used amongst visually impaired adults in place of or in combination with traditional assistive aids for specific tasks; however,

traditional devices are still preferable for certain tasks, including those requiring extensive typing or editing. This provides important context to designers

and rehabilitation personnel in understanding the factors influencing device usage.

 

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10400435.2019.1682084#.Xcr3YgJRFKU.linkedin

 

Thx, Albert

 

Sent from my iPhone

Resources: Google Photos Will Now Automatically Detect Your Documents by Paul Monckton, Forbes.com

Google Photos Will Now Automatically Detect Your Documents

Author: Paul Monckton

Date Written: Mar 30, 2019 at 8:00 AM

Date Saved: 3/30/19, 11:01 PM

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulmonckton/2019/03/30/google-photos-will-now-automatically-detect-your-documents/

Smartphone cameras are useful for a lot more than selfies and landscapes; they also make very handy portable document scanners. Now Google Photos has launched a new feature designed specifically to make your documents look more presentable and legible.

 

Google’s new Crop and Adjust feature takes care of photographed documents and receipts Documents, unlike people or places, are designed to be read rather than admired and this usually requires an entirely different approach when it comes to processing them and making them look their best. This often involves using functions such as rotating, cropping, sharpening and perhaps converting them to black and white for maximum readability.

The new “Crop and Adjust” feature in Google Photos will detect any photographed documents and suggest suitable edits such as those listed above which can then be implemented automatically in a single tap.

The result is a correctly-rotated document with the background removed and any text made as clear as possible.

Google Photos users will find the Crop and Adjust rolling out soon on iOS and Android.

If you find this function useful, then it’s worth checking out the ‘Scan’ function built into the Google Drive app. The app provides a similar set of automatic enhancements to the new Google Photos function, with the added facility of saving your documents directly to your Google Drive as a PDF rather than a jpeg. Android users can also place a Google Scan widget for one-touch access to the document scanning function.