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Texthelp Systems and ABBYY increase the access to information for people with dyslexia or literacy difficulties.
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About Texthelp Systems Ltd
Texthelp Systems Ltd is the worldwide
leader of literacy software solutions
provided through three core business
divisions: Education, Speech Services
and Publishing. Texthelp has been
developing assistive technology software
for the learning disabled community
since 1996. The aim has always been
to provide the most comprehensive
cutting-edge technology available to
provide inclusive education. Based in
Antrim, N. Ireland and with offices in the
US, Texthelp is currently experiencing a
period of explosive growth. The company
has a reseller network covering over 20
countries. The premier Education prod-
uct is Read&Write GOLD, which is a
discreet integrated solution comprised
of many features designed to assist
students with their reading and writing.
Speech Service products include
Browsealoud, which has been adopted
as the service of choice in the UK and
Ireland to read websites aloud for
those with literacy difficulties, which
includes 20% of the population in the
online world. Lexiflow is Texthelp’s latest
product and allows publishers to create
media rich, multimedia flash presen-
tations for electronic books and
eAssessment.
Texthelp has been a Deloitte
Technology Fast 50 Award winning
company for seven years. Read&Write
GOLD won the ICT Excellence Award
2007 for Best Use of Technology in
Education and Training and was
finalists in the BETT Awards 2008 for
the best Special Educational Needs
Solution. Browsealoud was highly
commended in the GoldenEye T Awards
2007 for Business IT.
Contact
Elaine Emerson
Marketing Manager in the Contact section
Texthelp Systems Ltd.
Enkalon Business Centre
25 Randalstown Road
Antrim
Northern Ireland
BT41 4LJ
www.texthelp.com
Texthelp Systems and ABBYY increase theaccess to information for people with dyslexiaor literacy difficulties. Read&Write GOLD is Texthelp's literacy support software designed to assist students of all ages whorequire extra help with reading and writing. The software assists people with learning disabilitiesby reading text aloud. Through the integration of ABBYY FineReader Engine, Texthelp is able tosubstantially increase Read&Write GOLD’s functionality and benefits to customers. The recognitionquality gives users better quality of information.
The Background:
According to www.dyslexiaaction.org.uk, between 4 and 5 percent of the population in the UK havedyslexia. This means that approximately 375,000 pupils in the UK and a total of some two millionpeople are severely affected with a condition which hinders their ability to recognise and assimilateinformation.
Texthelp’s Read&Write GOLD software assists users with reading, writing or composing text. TheScreenshot reader allows users to read inaccessible text on webpages aloud. The software offerssupport functionalities frequently absent in mainstream MS Windows applications. In addition,Read&Write GOLD provides a host of study features to assist any user with research and composition.The read-back facility alone is a perfect aid for research and proofreading - even the calculator andspellchecker have speech options. Coping with homophones and similar sounding words, can beespecially difficult but the software's homophone feature allows users to identify and change wordsthat are used in the wrong context.
Read&Write GOLD’s scan and read facility ensures that books and reports are accurately scannedinto MS Word, HTML or PDF formats.
The Challenge:
In order for inaccessible Web content like Flash to be processed and read aloud, OCR technology isneeded to convert the images of text into text that can be processed and read aloud by Texthelp’ssoftware. Graphics, images or pictures generally decrease the accuracy of recognition quality, puttingthe dyslexic user at a disadvantage again. The majority of student literature, whether books or theinternet, contain graphic elements. This calls for OCR software that can recognise images as well astext without needing a lot of development.
ABBYY® FineReader Engine
CA
SE
ST
UD
Y
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ABBYY Europe GmbHElsenheimerstr. 49, 80687 Munich, Germany
Tel: +49 89 51 11 59 - 0, Fax: +49 89 51 11 59 - [email protected]
www.ABBYY.com
ABBYY® FineReader Engine
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About ABBYY
ABBYY is a leading developer of
document recognition, document
conversion, data capture and linguistics
technologies.
ABBYY’s products include: FineReader
and PDF Transformer – end-user
applications for document conversion;
Recognition Server – a server-based
OCR and PDF conversion solution;
FlexiCapture and FormReader – data
capture programs for processing forms,
semi-structured and unstructured
documents; FineReader Engine SDKs
that provide a full spectrum of ABBYY’s
recognition technologies; and
Lingvo – a line of dictionary software.
More information about ABBYY at
www.ABBYY.com
ABBYY® FineReader Engine
The Solution:
Texthelp implemented ABBYY FineReader Engine, a SDK flexible enough for any type and size of application. ABBYY FineReader Engine can easily be integrated with most types of software architecture.It was important for Texthelp to find OCR software that could be implemented in their software withouthaving to make significant development changes.
One important requirement was to be able to read text within images. PDF conversion and field-level(zonal) recognition is the reason why ABBYY FineReader Engine is the perfect solution for the accuracyproblems Texthelp wished to overcome. ABBYY FineReader Engine has high quality recognition ofzones, or snippets of images, containing valuable data. This data is converted through intricate algorithms and then made available to the users.
To ensure that users have the best possibility to receive correct information, accuracy is crucial.ABBYY FineReader Engine is based on ABBYY’s award-winning technology which ensures high accuracy.
“Previously we had to use zoning to distinguish between text and pictures, but with ABBYY FineReaderEngine 8.1 it isn’t necessary anymore, as it is now automatically done. As the text within pictures canbe very important, we needed an easy to use, but still accurate software to process this information,”said Mr. Steve Menagh, Technical Development Manager from Texthelp.
The Outcome:
Texthelp continually upgrades and improves their award-winning Read&Write GOLD software to ensuretheir users have optimal literary assistance. The implementation of ABBYY FineReader Engine isanother addition to improve the users’ experience.
“As Read&Write GOLD is deployed throughout the entire University public workstation network, it isaccessible to all students. Reports from students have shown that, in particular, the facility of beingable to scan directly into MS Word and then use Read&Write to listen to the scanned documents isvery useful,” said Andrew Dykes, Assistive Technology Service from the University of Southampton.
