OrCam - fantastic technology for learners with reading difficulties and low vision

Posted by Craig Mill on the 22nd November, 2022

Category Visual Impairment Assistive Technology

Last week at CALL we had a demonstration of the OrCam products. I was initially sceptical at first as I saw the Orcam Eye at a conference a few years ago - it was attached to a rather long cable/battery pack and I thought it was a bit clunky. 

However, after the meeting I could see the potential for many learners with reading difficulties inlcuding those who are blind or have a visual impairment. 

There are 3 different products:

OrCam Learn

OrCam Learn – a small scanning style ‘pen’ available in a range of colours, which has been designed for dyslexic learners. It’s essentially a point and click device, where you select a page of text, align the laser, click a button and it reads the text aloud – very accurately.

The OrCam Learn is about £300 for the pen but it is bundled with some ‘analytical reading’ software which includes reading progress information, bar charts etc. The software bundle costs an additional £450 (approximate) annual subscription fee.

OrCam Read

OrCam Read – this is similar to OrCam Learn but is designed for people with low vision but it is also pitched for those with reading difficulties.

It doesn’t come with software and is available to buy as a stand-alone product for about £900.00. Apparently OrCam Read is popular in Further and Higher Education for students in receipt of the Students Disabled Allowance (DSA).

OrCam MyEye

OrCam MyEye – this is the one that really captured my imagine. OrCam MyEye, wearable technolgy designed for blind and visually impaired users.

The latest version of OrCam is small and very lightweight, the camera is attached to a pair of glasses. It reads text from books, worksheets, from a computer or phone screen, a whiteboard – all in real time, snap and read.

It also uses finger and hand gestures, e.g., point the glasses/camera at your wrist and it tells you the time.

Compared to the large magnifiers and distance cameras currently on the market the OrCam MyEye would make a great alternative, and competitively priced (about £2K) with some of the high end magnifiers – but no need to set up between classes, faffing with software and extremely easy to use and very flexible.

• On the downside, because the OrCam My Eye reads text in real time, it doesn’t store information, e.g., a scanned page etc, so there’s no way to save or annotate what has been scanned.

• But with the ability to share digital files via Glow and OneDrive/Google Classroom etc, this shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

There’s more on the OrCam MyEye here including a video overview: https://www.orcam.com/en/myeye2/