AMIS and GOCR: two free assistive technology programs

I’ve got a couple of free assistive technology applications to share with you today.

My reason for sharing them is that I was reviewing the
1 Stop for Free Assistive Technology
site this morning, looking over the list of free programs. After reading what they do, these two programs sure sound like tools I could make use of.

I’ve previously posted about this web site, basically a clearinghouse of free assistive technology, here on Access Ability and it is definitely a site worth noting again.

Now, about the software…

First, I will grab
AMIS,
The acronym for the Adaptive multimediaInformation System.

AMIS is open source DAISY playback software that is free to download and use. So, instead of needing to purchase software to playback DAISY files, I’ll give this community-built player a whirl. If it works as it should, this can help the pocketbook of blind and visually impaired people who need to access books in the DAISY format.

Additionally, the web site has downloads of the scripts needed to make the program play nice with the JAWS screen reader.

The second piece of software I’m going to download is
GOCR,
“an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) program, developed under the GNU Public License. It converts scanned images of text back to text files.”

After I’ve downloaded and installed these utilities, followed by a little time to familiarize and used them enough to discuss them, look back here later for reviews of these two assistive technology tools.