Remember the Intel Reader, the $1500 handheld device that acts as a hand-held portable scanner/OCR/text-to-speech device for the blind?
A company called LookTel is in the beta stage of bringing something similar to Windows Mobile camera phones. The device will speak aloud text (package labels or street signs) or identify currency within its field of vision; snapshot-OCR magazine articles, book pages, and so forth; and allow adding voice tags to patterned labels that can be applied to containers and other objects without speakable text.
According to the article, it will even allow the user to provide a remote feed of the camera to someone else to get assistance.
The three-minute video showing the software in action (embedded below the jump) is pretty impressive. This could be one of the first really affordable handheld assistance devices for the visually-impaired.
