About a year ago, a library administrator was tinkering with text-enlarging software, which makes it easier for visually impaired students to read. She found that the software could also turn text into sound, and thought it would make sense to make the program available to all students.
Seventeen computers at labs across the campus are now set up so that students can scan and convert their reading materials into MP3 files, which they can then download onto cellphones or other mobile devices.
The speed of the scanning itself depends on the quality of the scanner, but the software, called Kurzweil 3000, converts the scanned text into sound at a rate of three pages per second.
Source: Wired Campus
See Also: On a Somewhat Related Note: Legendary inventor and developer of the scanning technology mentioned in the article, Ray Kurzweil, is about to launch (along with Baker & Taylor and the National Foundation for the Blind) new e-reading software for the visually impaired. We blogged about it a couple of months ago. Very interesting and worth a look.
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