Wednesday, November 24, 2021

Ipevo Visualizer : my two cents

 After I watched the following video, I thought the Ipevo document camera and its Visualizer  software  would be helpful to read  hardcopy stuff for me.  Tge USB version of the camera was cost around  $100.  Other versions of of the camera with additional interface cost more.      The video seem to suggest that the Visualizer  software can be easily  used by a visually  impaired  person, but my experience was not the case.  

I was hoping this camera along with the software  would replace my desktop CCTV , which I can no longer  use due to  very poor eyesight.    I was hoping  the software would read whatever  document  I put under the camera. 


 The camera was mounted at  the end of 2 segments arm, with a stable base  at the other end.  The whole camera and arm assembly seem to be well made.  There was no software or any type of instruction in thepackage.  I had to go online to download the Visualizer software and watch couple of video  to get some idea on how to use the software.  TheVisualizer software  I donloaded from Ipevo website seem to missing  the text to speech function, or just hidden  under  other menu  that I couldn't find it.  I was able to find that function in the Visualizer  in the Microsoft window store.


I guess this software was not  designed with blind user  in mind.  Some buttons and other  functions were not accessible by screen reader.   The screen layout was  not  user friendly  for blind user.  It took me a while to figure out  to find the text to speech function  and its associated settings.    One of the major problem I encountered  was I had no way  to know whether the camera  would capture the whole page  of document that I place under the camera,, there was no help   with field of view.  My attempts  to  read a document were either cut off  at left or right edge.  I also had few document not recognized messages  with the same piece of paper.  


My initial  thought was thissoftware is not worth the trouble  for blind user.   

   I think the Seeing Ai app do a much better job on this task.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb4_ycccMKs

No comments:

Post a Comment