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>>Wade: Hi. I'm Wade Wingler with the
INDATA Project at Easter Seals Crossroads
in Indiana. Today, we're going to talk about
everyone's favorite topic, money. People who
have vision impairments, especially people
who are totally blind, may at times
may have a hard time figuring out what
money they're holding in their hand. Now,
if you're talking about a US quarter or dime,
or nickel or penny, those aren't as difficult,
because you know, quarters and dimes have
ridges around the edge and are different sizes,
and nickels and pennies are different sizes.
But when it comes to dollar bills versus twenty
dollar bills, it's difficult. In some countries,
different denominations are shaped differently,
or are different sizes and so it's easier to tell.
But in th US, it's a little bit tricky. And over the years
there have been a lot of devices out there
to help people figure out what kind of bills they're
talking about. For example, there used to be
a dveice that you would put a dollar in and it would beep
once, and a five and it would beep twice, and a ten
and it would beep three times, etc. Those devices
have been a little bit difficult to deal with sometimes,
and often times they're pretty expensive. But there is a
new program I want to show you. It's actually
an iPhone app, that makes that a much simpler task.
So come with me here on my desk and we're going
to mess around with money and an application,
or an app, called LookTel.
So on my desk here, I've got a twenty dollar
bill and a one dollar bill. In my hand I have
my iPhone. Now, to make the sound a little
bit better for the video, I've got my iPhone
connected to a bluetooth external speaker, so you
can hear what it does. But come here and look on
my screen real fast and you're going to see that
I've got a program called Money Reader by LookTel
and when I launch that, it very quickly turns on my iPhone
camera, and then I can bring this twenty dollar bill up
and hold it in front of it and it says exactly what
I'm holding up. If I hold up a one dollar bill,
it's going to identify that for me. And it's pretty good,
even if the one dollar bill is not 100% straight,
or laid out nice and neat, it still does a pretty good
job, which means that you can flip through a series
of bills in your hand and figure out what they are
pretty quick. Now LookTel is an interesting company
and they're just kind of emerging on the scene
these days. And they are working on other
technology that is going to do things like
identify the different stores in a Food Court
at a mall and I would encourage you to take a look
at their website, they've got some videos
of that technology that show how they're working
on every day object recognition and even optical
character recognition so that maybe someday in the future,
an app like this could help you read the menu at
a restaurant, or even help you when you are opening
up your mail, figure out how high your light bill is,
or those kind of things. But LookTel is an interesting
company, developing apps for the IOS platform, and
I think there is something going on there that
we'll want to keep our eyes on.
And so now you can tell what kind of money you
are holding in your hand, whether or not you have
the ability to see it with your eyes. So that's
your Tech Tip for this week. I'm Wade Wingler with
the INDATA project in Indiana.