The newest version of Knfb Reader, called as Knfb Mobile, now support Nokia N82 smartphone. Actually, Knfb Mobile is released in integrated bundle with Nokia N82. This mobile version aimed to be the improvement for the earlier one.

Knfb Reader Classic, the earlier version of knfb reader, has become well known palm software which consist of character recognition and text-to-speech technology. Ray Kurzweil, the originator of text-to-speech technology, said that he had got the inspiration from a blind gentleman who had sat next to him in a plane.

“I happened to sit next to a blind gentleman on a plane flight, and he explained to me that the only real handicap that he experienced was his inability to read ordinary printed material. It was clear that his visual disability imparted no real handicap in either communicating or traveling. So I had found the problem we were searching for - we could apply our ‘omni-font’ (any font) OCR (optical character recognition) technology to overcome this principal handicap of blindness. We didn’t have the ubiquitous scanners or text-to-speech synthesizers that we do today, so we had to create these technologies as well. By the end of 1975, we put together these three new technologies we had invented - omni-font OCR, CCD (Charge Coupled Device) flat-bed scanners, and text-to-speech synthesis to create the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind. The Kurzweil Reading Machine (KRM) was able to read ordinary books, magazines, and other printed documents out loud so that a blind person could read anything he wanted.”

Knfb Mobile has the ability to reads most printed documents, from letters and memos to pages in a book,reads address labels and package information and instructions. It also displays each sentence visually and highlights each word as it is read, stores thousands of pages on a flash memory and transfers text files to and from computers or Braille note takers. Also, it has faster reading speed than the classic version.

In addition, with the use of a screen reader, the user can access the other functions of the phone device including making and receiving phone calls, personal information management such as contacts, calendar, etc. Also contains ability to run accessible GPS programs, access to Adobe PDF files, voice recorder, music player and much more.

Though I’m not blind, i’m really thinking to have this gadget.