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Colm O'Gairbhith edited this page Jan 18, 2016 · 34 revisions

Upscribe : transcribing all the printed material in the world to rich accessible formats

A collaborative web-tool that facilitates the transformation of printed documents (graphics/pdf) to epub format, the standard for electronic books.

Gimme a usecase !

The real-time

  • A 12 year old student with low-vision in France scans a handout exercise given by his teacher.

  • He uploads the scan to upscribers where the first pass OCR (Optical Character Recognition) is done automatically.

  • A university student in Ghana gets an alert that someone is in need out there, logs on to upscribers, corrects any errors made by the OCR and ensures that the document is structured correctly.

  • The student gets his transcribed, ahem upscribed, document in minutes and continues on with the exercise.

  • With enough eyes, everyone can read.

  • The FAQ

  • Why transformation ?

    • Because the world is going digital but there is a risk that so much existing material gets left behind
    • Because so much existing material is not accessible for the print-challenged.
      • By print-challenged we mean those who are unable to read, or have difficulty reading, printed materials (Low-vision/Learning disabilities (dyslexia)/Neuro-motor)

  • Why a collaborative webtool ?

    • Because this is for everybody, everyone can benfit , everyone can contribute.

  • Why epub ?

    • Because epub, actually epub3, is the standard of electronic books and is compatible with all modern ebook readers
    • Because epub is html so once we're in epub format, it's trivial to publish in any web-browser
    • Because epub3 allows adding an audio layer so that, whazam, every that is upscribed is instantly available in audio

A web application that makes school better for print-challenged kids (and all the others too). By print-challenged we mean those who are unable to read, or have difficulty reading, printed materials

  • Low-vision
  • Learning disabilities (dyslexia)
  • Neuro-motor

Today students receive learning material in multiple formats (printed/hand-written/pdf/docx/odt).

This project/webapp will provide the following

  • Rapid access to what the student needs
    • Grouping/Filtering of Date/Subject/Topic using meta-data (tagging)
    • A simplified process for conversion to web-native formats (html5/jpeg)
  • Simple WYSIWYG transcription (saved as html)
    • Crowd-sourced transcription : With enough eyes, every kid can read
    • V1.0 : text-entry limited to (h1/h2/h3/lists/bod/italic/underlined)
    • V2.0 : Integrated OCR to kick-start the transcription process

Accessibility enhancements are

  • Font size/color, background color adapted per student
  • Text-highlighting as student moves through text
  • Text-To-Speech with highlighting
  • Enhanced navigation by keyboard (and other enhanced accessibility input devices)

Platform/Tool agnostic : A pure web solution, no plugins, no installation

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