Increasing subtitle font size to watch foreign films

Stargardt's disease has limited my access to all possible forms of visual arts. With more loss in central vision, my depth and colour perception has further decreased. I no longer visit art galleries and museums. I hesitate to take out my camera for street photography. Cinema and theatre are still accessible from the front row, but only in the languages I know. Few weeks back, an Afghan troupe performed Shakespeare at Rangashankara, a local theatre. I was in dilemma for a week whether to buy tickets or not.  (Will I be able to read subtitles? or even see subtitle panels? :P)

I don't have problems with subtitles while watching movies at home. There is a feature in VLC media player which allows to enlarge the subtitle font size:

1. Go to Menu Tools > Preferences

2. Select Subtitles & OSD

3. In Subtitle effects, set font size to large or larger and Save.

At larger font size, the screen appears like this. You can download VLC media player from this link

Reading problems

Finished reading La carte et le mémoire  (Michel Houellebecq) and Cosmicomics (Italo Calvino) - around 600 pages over 3 weeks, in office shuttle, cafés. Had sore eyes as a result. This month was exceptionally hectic even at work with a huge volume of translations and tight deadlines.


I find I move between reading and non-reading phases all the time. As continuous reading always results in sore eyes and/or discomfort, i really avoid reading. And then when it has been too long (say a month or two), I pick up again a book and try to finish it.

I'm still not used to text-to-speech. It sounds too odd and kills any pleasure whatsoever of reading. Audio books are alright, but the experience is completely different. Perhaps reading is irreplaceable. Text-to-speech fails with fiction and complex non-fiction books.

As a possible solution, I'm thinking of buying a compatible refreshable braille display. My reading speed is better with braille and it would not involve any reading stress. But braille displays are very expensive currently, between $2500 - $8000. Several projects for developing an affordable refreshable Braille display are going on. Once in the market, the retail price will be around $300 for these displays (For e.g., Quixote, by Bristol Braille). These new displays are expected to be available by the end of 2012. I will wait for few months.

Do you use a refreshable Braille display for reading? Any suggestions?

Google's New Context-based Spell check

Google will soon roll out their new context-based spell check integrated in their browser Chrome. It might be a big relief for people with dyslexia or low vision as it analyzes the context to recommend correct spellings

So if you wrote "Icland is an icland". It will suggest "Iceland is an island". So totally cool!  Here is a link for more details : Smart Spell Check



Update: For Chrome users, a grammar and spell check Ginger extension can be downloaded from here

A portable digital magnifier for all-purpose reading?

I have been trying to find in Forums on how people with low vision can do extended hours of reading. Kindle for the time being gives me access to only editions sold by Amazon. I still miss on a lot of books and especially books where the typeface is fixed.

Some people suggested desktop magnifiers which range between $2500-$4500. But I thought that surely there must be something better out there than bulky devices like MyReader2. 

I also came across Intel Reader, which is a portable scanner/reader and comes at half the price of a desktop magnifier (Amazon lists the product at $845. But you can contact Intel GE Care Innovations to check for any ongoing discount). Doesn't fit in the pocket but you can carry it in your bag to to school,  libraries, supermarket (weight: 630gm). Just like desktop magnifiers it works on OCR technology but you do not need to put the print material under a scanner. You just point & shoot to capture the printed text (e.g., a book page, a newspaper article, a restaurant menu...) which gets converted to digital text. You can view this text in large font size, customisable foreground, background colours. Or you can choose to listen to the text using text-to-speech feature. The files can also be stored in mp3, DAISY,wav file format. Yes, it is compatible with DAISY. You can connect it to your Windows or MAC to download files.


I like the concept but it seems still too bulky. And the screen is too small for reading. 

Update - Intel GE Care Innovations has also released Achieve tablet which is similar to Intel Reader in terms of features but lighter, with wider LCD tablet like display (do not search at Amazon, it will  most likely give you vitamin supplements as search result :P).

Features:  

• 7 inch display with high contrast themes
• Dual-core 1 GHz ARM Cortex* A-9 processor
• Android* Honeycomb* 3.2 Operating system
• 5.0-megapixel camera to support photo capture of:

o   8.5 X 11 page 
support for two pages but can’t exceed 8.5” x 11”

o   150 lines per page

o   8-point, 350-dpi font

• File creation (DAISY, MP3, .txt, .jpg)
• Import or capture and read and/or listen
• High-quality natural speaking voices (Only English UK and US)
• Gesture-based navigation
• Achieve Software for Windows* or Mac*
• Supports DAISY 2, 2.02, and 3; NIMAS 1:1; .txt; Learning Ally Audiobooks; and Bookshare digital books. 

Price is not available but this site lists it for around $700.

Achieve Tablet is a good solution for students who need to read a lot of print material. I would have liked if it could support MOBI, ePUB and PDF formats and serve as an all-purpose reader solution. 

ZoomReader app for iPhone 4

For iPhone users, AI Squared's ZoomReader allows to magnify and read the text in the captured image. You take a picture of the sign you want to read, it magnifies and retrieves the text from the image using OCR technology and reads it out to you. And it is just priced at $20.

Kindle's Inaccessibility

I purchased a Kindle 3 a year ago. So far, the accessibility feature has been mostly adequate for me. Although text-to-speech and type face options depend on the publishers, which I find a huge issue. I always need to "try a sample" to ensure that I can "read" it!

After talking to some other people with low vision, I realised that Kindle still does not offer font option for page menu navigation. The Voice guide option (Menu - Settings - Page 2 first option) can help but it is not very reactive. By the time it reads out the contents, I am already squinting to find my way through on my own.

Still, I feel that e-ink does not strain my eyes if I read in enough light. When I purchased Kindle I could read easily in font size 5, now I rather choose font size 6. There are two more bigger font sizes that I can still choose.




I do not use text-to-speech option a lot, because the text-to-speech technology used in Kindle is still very basic. There is no pause between sentences which most of the times becomes very confusing.