Review of the Orcam Read

01/13/22 • 17 min

Imagine a blind person going into a restaurant, picking up the menu and perusing what is on offer without having to ask someone else to read it or get assistance from a member of staff?

That’s what the Orcam Read offers its users. It’s a small pen-like device around the size of a highlighter pen and uses a special camera and laser to examine text and reproduce the results in audio in seconds.

Today on the podcast Jason joins Steven Scott from the company VisionAid Technologies, a family-run business that sells a wide range of technology suitable for blind and partially sighted people. The team also offer excellent one-to-one support before you buy to ensure what you are buying is what you really need, and there is excellent aftercare as well.

Here’s a direct link to the Orcam Read page on the VisionAid website.

Jason demonstrates how the device works and how to get a trial for yourself. If you’ve got one let us know what you think or if you have any other comments for our show join the conversation by emailing [email protected] or call our voice message number on 0204 571 3354.

Imagine a blind person going into a restaurant, picking up the menu and perusing what is on offer without having to ask someone else to read it or get assistance from a member of staff?

Here’s a direct link to the Orcam Read page on the VisionAid website.

Previous Episode

The Morning After The Braille Class Before

Following on from the first braille class held by the excellent Braillists Foundation on Tuesday 11th January which will continue to run for the next seven weeks, Steven Scott and Shaun Preece get together to talk about how they got on and what they felt they got from it.

The duo also discuss the different resources that are available out there for anyone who is keen to learn braille. Here are some of the links to the products and services Steven and Shaun talked about on this episode.

Braillists Foundation – Braille for Beginners Course
RNIB Shop – Fingerprint course (Volumes 1-11)
RNIB Shop – Dot To Dot Fingerprint course for touch learners
RNIB Shop – Perkins Classic Brailler
RNIB Shop – Perkins Classic Jumbo Cell Perkins
Software – Perky Duck – (braille input software notepad for Windows PCs)

The guys also read through your feedback which has been wonderful so far and we are so thankful to all of you who got in touch. If you’d like to comment on our episodes you can email [email protected] or call and leave us a voice message for inclusion on our show by calling 0204 571 3354. Alternatively you can find us and chat with us on Twitter – Steven is @BlindTechGuy and Shaun is @TheBlurredNerd.

Next Episode

Is Audio The Future Of Social Media?

The evolution of social media continued in 2019 with the launch of Clubhouse – an audio-led social media app that offered to bring conference-style interaction and networking to its users.

While the concept seemed unlikely to take hold, the pandemic in 2020 made the company’s mission seem almost perfect to people who could no longer visit in-person events. Many businesses and entrepreneurs used the app as a way to make new friends, and money.

For the blind community the app offered a chance for groups to form around the world in an easy-to-use environment. However it was beset with challenges for our community, including an inaccessible app, the need to be ‘invited’ rather than just sign up and the lack of an Android app for at least a year after it was launched. And for the deaf community, the lack of captioning services meant it was a non-starter.

As each challenge was dealt with, in thanks particularly to the hard working and influential advocates who used the platform to raise concerns, blind people adopted the service as a new way to share their stories and promote themselves not just to other blind people but also the wider population.

But could this innovative style of platform become the norm? We see services such as Twitter and Facebook adopting audio rooms and spaces so is this the future for social media? Life After Blindness podcast host Tim Schwartz joins Blind Guy Steven Scott to discuss in this podcast.