K-NFB, a portable device that scans any available text and reads it back to visually impaired people, will be on sale in the UK by July of 2006. The device was developed by Ray Kurzweil.
In a month's time, tired people will be placing pages of a book in their machine and hear it read to them..." Then an entire page of the lad's typing was run through the sound-transposing machine, purposely slowed so that the sounds could be differentiated. (Read more about the sound-transposing machine)
If you are interested in science-fictional translation devices, check out the babelfish from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and of course George Orwell's Speakwrite, which does the opposite trick - speech-to-text. Read a bit more about Reading 'to go' for blind people; also, check out Ray Kurzweil's website.
(This Science Fiction in the News story used with permission from Technovelgy.com
