ORCam Pen Reads Aloud Text

 Seems quite a useful development: 

The OrCam Read is a pen-like AI-based device that reads aloud text to people with reading challenges. OrCam's AI-Based Reading Device Wins CES Innovation Award

The Times of Israel

By Shoshanna Solomon

Israeli artificial intelligence (AI) device developer OrCam Technologies has been named to receive the CES 2021 Innovation Awards Best of Innovation award in the "accessibility" category for its OrCam Read digital reader, a pen-sized assistive handheld device developed for people with reading challenges. The device is designed to read aloud full pages or screens of text from any printed or digital surface, without an Internet link. The device's AI algorithms enable intuitive point-and-click function, triggering two precision laser-guidance options to read highlighted text or target a point to start reading. Its text-to-speech reading engine also has an interactive feature integrating computer vision and natural language understanding as a voice-activated assistant. ... " 

OrCam for Visual, Hearing Impairment

Basically a navigation aid, which could have profound assistive effect, but implies it must be taught specific contexts to be most useful.  How hard that is to do, or how error prone, is unclear.  Positioned as 'Personal AI' .  Available now.   Their site.

Glasses talk, ears focus, in OrCam's tech showcase    by Nancy Cohen , Tech Xplore

OrCam Technologies at this year's CES made a name for itself as solutions bearer for wearable assistive technology. They have developed wearable aides for hearing and for reading. These make use of computer vision and machine learning technologies.

Prof. Amnon Shashua, OrCam Technologies Co-founder and Co-CEO, talked of "wearable, personal AI" and "AI as a companion."

First, there is OrCam's vision device called OrCam MyEye 2. TechCrunch described the OrCam MyEye 2 as a tiny device "for people with visual impairment that you clip on your glasses to help you navigate the world around you."

It has features that include the identification of consumer products, colors and money notes, said The Jerusalem Post, which described it as the size of a finger. It involves interactive reading/natural language processing as well as orientation (mobility and object identification, said the article.... " 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OrCam_device