As always, thanks for this great piece of advice. Best to you, Emrah On Jul 10, 2012, at 1:36 AM, Esther wrote:
> Hi All, > > I use the Prizmo app with my iPhone 4's camera to OCR text. However, > recently I've been using a wireless scanner on my network that I control with > an iOS app named VueScan Mobile to send scans to the camera roll on my iPhone > or iPad, and then using OCR apps like Prizmo or TextGrabber that can import > images from the camera roll to OCR. This works pretty nicely when I'm at my > home network and want to get an OCR of a simple text document without going > go my computer. Now the gotcha is that the all-in-one printer/scanner/copier > that I'm using for this is the HP Photosmart D110a, which is one of the first > iOS AirPrint enabled printers. And I have to say that I think this is a > terrible printer to set up from the point of view of accessibility, since it > uses a touch screen with no tactile features or audio feedback to select > options and input the IP address information. On the other hand, once it is > set up (which you cannot do without sighted assistance), you can work with > this wirelessly as well as through a USB connection. I'm using this printer > because it was free with a MacBook Air purchase that was made last year. I > think that Apple has discontinued the free or $99 reimbursement printer > program since then. > > If you want to check whether this app will work with your wireless printer, > you can check the listed supported printers at the developer's "VueScan > Mobile" web page at: > http://www.hamrick.com/mob.html > Alternatively, you can download the free version of the VueScan Mobile app, > which does not have support for the high resolution option that is needed for > OCR, but which will otherwise work. > > In any case, this HP D110a printer, along with a number of other HP, Canon, > and Epson wireless printers, is automatically detected when you start up the > VueScan Mobile iOS app. There's a very simple "VueScan Mobile" screen with > an "Options" button and a "Scan" button at the bottom of the page. The > "Options" button lets you select the scanner (in case there is more than one > on your network), choose the resolution (which you want to be "high" for > OCR), select the scan mode ("text" for OCR, but also settings for black and > white or color photo), and an "append" switch button that can be set to "on" > for multipage documents. > > So to access the setup options, I would do a four finger tap on the bottom > half of the screen to go to the last element -- the "Scan" button -- and > flick left to the "Options" button and double tap. (These two buttons are > just above the "Home" button, but you have to move up and to the left to get > to the "Options" button, or up and to the right from the "Home" button to get > to the "Scan" button directly by touch.) There is one unlabeled button in > the top right corner of the "VueScan Mobile" screen, which is an info button > to access the "About" screen with the version number and an option to "Email > Problem Report". I use the two finger double tap and hold to label this as > "Info". After the triple tone a "Label Element" window should appear that > lets you type in your custom label in the text field. Flick right the "Save" > button and double tap to save your label. > > Once you have set up your options, double tap the "Scan" button. It takes > maybe 20 seconds for the scan to complete. You won't hear anything announced > until the scan is finished, when you'll hear "1 of 1". However, if you do a > two-finger flick up read all, you'll get an announcement "in progress" at > the end. I just wait now until I hear the "1 of 1". > > The page with the scanned results has a "Save" button in the top right, which > has options for "Camera Roll", "Send Email…", "Print", and "Other…" To OCR > the page, you want to choose "Camera Roll", so you can open the jpeg image in > an OCR app that lets you select inputs from your camera roll images. The > other options will send an email with your image as an attachment, bring up a > printer options menu if you have an AirPrint enabled printer on your network, > or open the image in another app that is capable of accepting either the PDF > or jpeg output. On my devices this defaults to iBooks, but this would simply > store an image version of the contents in that app. > > There are a few other buttons on the scanned output screen. There is a > "Scan" button in the top left corner to allow you to return to the "VueScan > Mobile" screen for more scanning. At the bottom of the screen, there are > three buttons. From left to right these are: "PLCrop" - interactively crop > the section of the scanned image (requires vision, so double tap the "Cancel" > button if you happened to select this); "PLRotateArrow" -- bring you to a > screen with buttons where you can rotate the image by 90 degrees to the right > (clockwise) or left (counterclockwise) with buttons at the bottom of the > screen labeled "RotateRight" and "RotateLeft"; "UIButtonBarTrash" -- brings > up a "Delete Page" option. I would either relabel this last button as > "Delete", or just remember that the last element on this page is the button > to "delete". > > If you do not delete the scan, and double tap the "Scan" button to return to > the "ViewScan Mobile" screen, there will now be a button in the top left > corner of the screen that allows you to return to the scanned page. It will > have a name like "Scan" followed by a series of numbers -- for example, > "Scan1341865680 1" button, > > So the procedure I follow, once I've set up the scan options for the ViewScan > Mobile app to "high" resolution and "text" is: > > 1. Open the ViewScan Mobile app > 2. Double tap the "Scan" button, which I locate with a four finger tap on the > bottom half of the screen to move to the last element > 3. When the scan completes after 20 seconds or so, and I hear the "1 of 1" > announcement that I am on the scanned screen, double tap the "Save" button in > the top right corner and select the "Camera Roll" button. (Note that if you > do not find buttons on the screen of scanned output, just double tap in the > center of the screen to bring these up. The scanned output screen behaves > like ebook reader apps in being able to show you the results with or without > superposed controls.) > 4. Either single click the home button to go to the home screen or, if I've > recently used an OCR app like Prizmo or TextGrabber, double click the home > button to go to the App Switcher to launch my selected OCR app. > 5. Assuming that I am using Prizmo for OCR: > 5a. I flick right past "Settings" to "Text" and double tap. > 5b. On the "Photo" screen I flick right to "Album" and double tap > 5c. On the "Photos" screen I flick right to "Camera Roll" and double tap > 5d. On the "Camera Roll" screen I do a four finger tap in the bottom half of > the screen to go to the last element. VoiceOver will announce this as "IMG" > followed by a sequence of numbers and the word "image". I double tap this > entry and am returned to the "Photo" screen. > 5e. On the "Photo" screen I flick right to the "Next" button in the top right > corner and double tap. > 5f. Prizmo enters the "Processing" screen and after 1 or 2 seconds I'm taken > to the "Edit" screen. You can double tap in the text area to make corrections > and then double tap the "Done" button. Or you can just double tap the "Next" > button again in the top right corner. > 5g. On the "Text" screen there is a bottom row of buttons with options like > "Read", "Translate", "Copy", "Album", and "Mail". If you do a three finger > swipe to the right, you'll get the second page of options, which include > "Dropbox", "Evernote", and "CloudApp". Some of these you won't use ("Read" > lets you purchase a voice to read your scanned text -- but since we have > VoiceOver I never bother with that; on the previous version of Prizmo > "MobileMe" was also an option that appeared before "Dropbox", but it was > removed.) I don't use the "Save" button in the top right corner, which stores > the results in the > > I also tried this with TextGrabber and got slightly better results from the > OCR. The steps for TextGrabber are: > 6. Assuming I am using TextGrabber for OCR: > 6a. Double tap the "Album" button in the bottom right corner of the screen > 6b. On the "Photos" screen I flick right to "Camera Roll" and double tap > 6c. On the "Camera Roll" screen I do a four finger tap in the bottom half of > the screen to go to the last element. VoiceOver will announce this as "IMG" > followed by a sequence of numbers and the word "image". I double tap this > entry and am returned to a screen where VoiceOver announces "CropClipper, > dimmed". (This is for interactive cropping of the image, which requires > vision, and I don't use.) > 6d. I double tap the "Read" button in the bottom right corner of the screen. > (This is also the last element in the screen, if you want to use a > four-finger tap on the bottom half of the screen to navigate.) > 6e. The image is taken through OCR, and the process takes a few seconds > longer than with Prizmo. If I touch the bottom of the screen while this is > in progress, I'll hear VoiceOver say "Recognition" > 6f. On the "TextGrabber" screen I can read the text with a two finger flick > up "read all" or I can double tap the center of the field to edit the text, > then double tap the "Done" button in the top right corner of the screen to > exit this mode. > 6g. I double tap the "Menu" button in the bottom right corner of the screen. > The menu options are redrawn on the bottom of the screen, so to access them I > move my finger up the screen from the bottom right corner to "Dictionary" or > more usually, I'll move my finger up from the "History" button inthe bottom > left corner to "Copy" and double tap to copy the text to the clipboard, Then > I can paste it into any other app. Other options that you can navigate to > (in the 8 options over the bottom half of the screen from the menu are: > Twitter, Facebook, Evernote, Google Search, Copy, Mail, SMS, and Dictionary > (only works if you bought the ABBYY Lingvo dictionaries application). > > Overall, I've had the best results with OCR (directly to my iPhone 4, not via > a scanner), with Prizmo and ABBYY TextGrabber. Prizmo seem more robust, in > that it can more easily tolerate slight misalignments in camera images and > still give good results, where TextGrabber requires more precise positioning > and holding of the camera. If you want to learn to use one of these OCR apps > with VoiceOver without vision, then I also think that Prizmo is the best app > to use to train yourself. I've also used the ZoomReader app with voice > control enabled, just using VoiceOver to OCR. (This app is designed for low > vision users, but in versions following the original release they enabled > VoiceOver support). One distinct difference about this app when used to OCR > images from the camera roll, is that the images have to be correctly oriented > (with top of page at the top of the image), in order for the OCR to work. > This limitation doesn't hold true for Prizmo or TextGrabber; I can rotate the > image I use from the camera roll by 90 degrees in any direction and still get > the OCR results provided the text in my image is well aligned with the edges > of the picture frame. This also means that I don't have to worry about > whether I scanned a page upside down with the VueScan Mobile app before I > send it to the camera roll for use with an OCR app like Prizmo or > TextGrabber, but I do have to worry about this if I use ZoomReader from the > camera roll. Presumably this is because ZoomReader is designed for low > vision users, and they use the extra information about text orientation in > the, which can determined if you have vision, to try to get a better OCR > solution. So a low vision user might find that ZoomReader works better as an > OCR tool. > > The VueScan Mobile + OCR combination via either Prizmo or TextGrabber on an > iPhone or iPad isn't meant to challenge use of a scanner on your computer. > It's simply that this combination is good enough for many purposes without > having to go to my computer. And this should be usable by all the people who > have difficulty using an OCR app like Prizmo and taking pictures with the > camera. Since the images are relayed from your scanner, and are sent to your > camera roll, this should be usable on devices with either a poor camera or no > camera, provided you can load up the OCR app on that device. (I know this > works with Prizmo, because I tried loading up the app on a first generation > iPad to find out how well it could OCR screen captures. The answer is, not > particularly very well since the resolution of the iPad 1 screen isn't that > good. However, images sent from the VueScan Mobile app using a supported > wireless printer should have better resolution.) > > For those of you who are interested in trying this app, here's a link to the > URL of the free version of the VueScan Mobile app: > • VueScan Mobile Free by Hamrick Software (free, but does not support the > high resolution option needed for OCR) > http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/vuescan-mobile-free/id486283293?mt=8 > You can check whether your wireless scanner device is recognized and > supported by the free version of the app. If it is, you can get the full > version of the VueScan Mobile app: > • VueScan Mobile by Hamrick Software ($4.99) > http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/vuescan-mobile/id450984682?mt=8 > > This app is available internationally. Again, you can read more about this > app and the supported HP, Canon, and Epson devices. I'd love to know about > more accessible wireless scanners or all-in-one devices that include a > scanner. And Scott Howell gets the blame for bringing this app to my > attention *grin*. He mentioned it in a viphone list post last year. > > HTH. Cheers, > > Esther > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "MacVisionaries" group. > To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en.
