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
