Intel Reader is a mobile handheld device that photographs printed text and reads it aloud to the user. It was developed by Intel to assist people who have reading-based disabilities such as Dyslexia, low-vision or blindness. It is powered by Intel's Atom Processor, runs on Moblin Operating System and consists of an OCR engine and a text-to-speech engine.

The original idea for Intel Reader came from Ben Foss, an Intel employee, who was identified with dyslexia during his early school days. Due to his disability, he was mostly dependent on others to read the text for him. After completing graduate school, he started experimenting with different methods to convert printed text to speech. However, he was not satisfied with the results and finally approached Intel to develop a device that would assist people like him. Intel then developed the device after getting inputs from several users and it was released as Intel Reader on November 10, 2009.http://www.intel.com/healthcare/reader/origins.htm

Intel Reader has a built-in 5MP camera which is used to take the pictures of printed text. Once the picture is taken, the OCR Engine converts it into digital text which is presented to the user as voice by the text-to-speech engine.

Other key features of Intel Reader include,

1. It can be used along with Intel Portable Capture Station to capture images of an entire book.
2. It has ability to change the speed of voice reading.
3. It can hold about 500,000 pages of text or 600 pages of scanned book.
4. It allows magnification of text for low vision people.
5. It supports various formats including DAISY(digital accessible information system), MP3 and Wav.
6. It can generate MP3 files from the printed materials that can be played on digital music players and computers.

" The ability to scan and read custom text makes the Intel Reader something very different from the current offerings of e-book readers. This is clearly a multi-purpose device designed to enrich the life of its user, not just be a portal to selling electronic books. The Reader can speak the menus aloud to the user, and the instruction manual comes as an audio CD, making this extremely friendly to visually impaired individuals."-CrunchGearhttp://www.crunchgear.com/2009/11/10/introducing-the-1500-intel-e-book-reader/

"While ereader devices, such as Amazon Kindle, Sony Reader, or iRex are excellent products for storing thousands of ebooks and making it possible for people with normal eyesight to read their book collections from the sharp screen, these new devices haven't really helped people with poor eyesight. There are many people with dyslexia, weak eyes or who are blind altogether. For many years, PC applications that can turn computer text into speech have been available. Intel has taken this idea as the building block into its new ereader device, but the company enhanced the idea with a number of useful features."-AvecMobilehttp://www.avecmobile.com/index.php?id=1469