Re: Off Topic: Poll on how to make paper money accessible
Hi, Everad, They put a device out now that is free and reads the bills. Thanks, Alex, On 24-Mar-09, at 1:53 PM, E.J. Zufelt wrote: The Canadian approach, also known as a waste of taxpayer money, was to put braille on the bills. One full braille cell representing $5, 2 for $10, 3 for $20, and 4 for $50. The braille flattens in no time at all and is virtually useless unless you have a new crisp bill. HTH, Everett On 24-Mar-09, at 5:45 PM, Greg Kearney wrote: I don't think this requires a technological solution. Australia has currency that is both accessible, nearly indestructible short of burning, and has never been counterfeited. Here is how theirs work: Each bill is a different color and a different length. The bills are $5, $10, $20 and $100 the $1 and $2 are coins. Blind Citizens of Australia makes a give away a small plastic device that you place any bill into and then fold the bill over the top. The device has marking to indicate the bills value based on how long the bill is. The bills themselves are made from a plastic material that can be wash, folded and can not be torn. Each bill has a little clear window in it which is a different shape and texture so even if you don't have one of the BCA devices you could still tell the bills apart by touch. Persons with color perception can just use the different colors of the bills. It's simple efective and secure. Greg Kearney 535 S. Jackson St. Casper, Wyoming 82601 307-224-4022 gkear...@gmail.com On Mar 24, 2009, at 12:12 PM, Jessi Rathwell wrote: dude, I went to that presentation too!!! very, very interesting!!! I can't wait til this becomes available! On 24-Mar-09, at 11:06 AM, Chris Blouch wrote: Well, since we're already somewhat off topic, one of the most amazing presentations I went to at CSUN was a product called SeeScan from a company called iVisit. It uses a camera image to do object recognition based on pictures. In the demo they laid out a bunch of stuff such as cereal boxes, CDs, US currency and all they did was aim the camera to have it read off what it was. They ran it on some small computer about the size of an old-school walkman tape player about 1x5x7 and a USB camera. It apparently can handle differing angles, orientations and lighting automatically and completes the acquisition and recognition about 4 times a second. So pretty much as soon as they aimed it at a $5 bill it started saying five dollar bill over and over until they aimed it at something else. It can even handle partially obscured objects such as a credit card that is partly under a piece of paper. They tested it with 10 blind users and had 100% success identifying objects. I asked them about scalability since I might want to have a whole grocery store worth of objects loaded up. They said it can handle about 10,000 images in a single database. You can swap out databases and each image takes about 10K after processing (100MB for 10,000 objects). They are hoping there will be online community swaps of databases so you can share what you've already stored. It can 'learn' a new object in about 4 seconds. You just aim it at the object and hit the learn button and then associate some text with the object. The work is being done as part of a grant from the US Veterans Admin (I think) so they said once it's out of the lab it should be cheap because the research costs don't have to be recouped by the manufacturer. They also have a client/server version working with a cell phone camera and a remote processing server. Sorry for the off-topic but this was pretty incredible and it seemed few people came to their presentation. CB alena.roberts2...@gmail.com wrote: I am taking a poll on my blog on how to make U.S. paper currency accessible to the blind. In September of last year, a judge ordered the treasury to make the money accessible. As far as I know, there has been no plans to actually change our money. Please visit my blog and vote. The poll will be open until the middle of next month. I plan to blog about the results and send them to national blindness organizations and the treasury department. I think that they need to know what the blind community needs before they make any changes. http://blind-gal.blogspot.com Alena --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups MacVisionaries group. To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Off Topic: Poll on how to make paper money accessible
dude, I went to that presentation too!!! very, very interesting!!! I can't wait til this becomes available! On 24-Mar-09, at 11:06 AM, Chris Blouch wrote: Well, since we're already somewhat off topic, one of the most amazing presentations I went to at CSUN was a product called SeeScan from a company called iVisit. It uses a camera image to do object recognition based on pictures. In the demo they laid out a bunch of stuff such as cereal boxes, CDs, US currency and all they did was aim the camera to have it read off what it was. They ran it on some small computer about the size of an old-school walkman tape player about 1x5x7 and a USB camera. It apparently can handle differing angles, orientations and lighting automatically and completes the acquisition and recognition about 4 times a second. So pretty much as soon as they aimed it at a $5 bill it started saying five dollar bill over and over until they aimed it at something else. It can even handle partially obscured objects such as a credit card that is partly under a piece of paper. They tested it with 10 blind users and had 100% success identifying objects. I asked them about scalability since I might want to have a whole grocery store worth of objects loaded up. They said it can handle about 10,000 images in a single database. You can swap out databases and each image takes about 10K after processing (100MB for 10,000 objects). They are hoping there will be online community swaps of databases so you can share what you've already stored. It can 'learn' a new object in about 4 seconds. You just aim it at the object and hit the learn button and then associate some text with the object. The work is being done as part of a grant from the US Veterans Admin (I think) so they said once it's out of the lab it should be cheap because the research costs don't have to be recouped by the manufacturer. They also have a client/server version working with a cell phone camera and a remote processing server. Sorry for the off-topic but this was pretty incredible and it seemed few people came to their presentation. CB alena.roberts2...@gmail.com wrote: I am taking a poll on my blog on how to make U.S. paper currency accessible to the blind. In September of last year, a judge ordered the treasury to make the money accessible. As far as I know, there has been no plans to actually change our money. Please visit my blog and vote. The poll will be open until the middle of next month. I plan to blog about the results and send them to national blindness organizations and the treasury department. I think that they need to know what the blind community needs before they make any changes. http://blind-gal.blogspot.com Alena --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups MacVisionaries group. To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Off Topic: Poll on how to make paper money accessible
I don't think this requires a technological solution. Australia has currency that is both accessible, nearly indestructible short of burning, and has never been counterfeited. Here is how theirs work: Each bill is a different color and a different length. The bills are $5, $10, $20 and $100 the $1 and $2 are coins. Blind Citizens of Australia makes a give away a small plastic device that you place any bill into and then fold the bill over the top. The device has marking to indicate the bills value based on how long the bill is. The bills themselves are made from a plastic material that can be wash, folded and can not be torn. Each bill has a little clear window in it which is a different shape and texture so even if you don't have one of the BCA devices you could still tell the bills apart by touch. Persons with color perception can just use the different colors of the bills. It's simple efective and secure. Greg Kearney 535 S. Jackson St. Casper, Wyoming 82601 307-224-4022 gkear...@gmail.com On Mar 24, 2009, at 12:12 PM, Jessi Rathwell wrote: dude, I went to that presentation too!!! very, very interesting!!! I can't wait til this becomes available! On 24-Mar-09, at 11:06 AM, Chris Blouch wrote: Well, since we're already somewhat off topic, one of the most amazing presentations I went to at CSUN was a product called SeeScan from a company called iVisit. It uses a camera image to do object recognition based on pictures. In the demo they laid out a bunch of stuff such as cereal boxes, CDs, US currency and all they did was aim the camera to have it read off what it was. They ran it on some small computer about the size of an old-school walkman tape player about 1x5x7 and a USB camera. It apparently can handle differing angles, orientations and lighting automatically and completes the acquisition and recognition about 4 times a second. So pretty much as soon as they aimed it at a $5 bill it started saying five dollar bill over and over until they aimed it at something else. It can even handle partially obscured objects such as a credit card that is partly under a piece of paper. They tested it with 10 blind users and had 100% success identifying objects. I asked them about scalability since I might want to have a whole grocery store worth of objects loaded up. They said it can handle about 10,000 images in a single database. You can swap out databases and each image takes about 10K after processing (100MB for 10,000 objects). They are hoping there will be online community swaps of databases so you can share what you've already stored. It can 'learn' a new object in about 4 seconds. You just aim it at the object and hit the learn button and then associate some text with the object. The work is being done as part of a grant from the US Veterans Admin (I think) so they said once it's out of the lab it should be cheap because the research costs don't have to be recouped by the manufacturer. They also have a client/server version working with a cell phone camera and a remote processing server. Sorry for the off-topic but this was pretty incredible and it seemed few people came to their presentation. CB alena.roberts2...@gmail.com wrote: I am taking a poll on my blog on how to make U.S. paper currency accessible to the blind. In September of last year, a judge ordered the treasury to make the money accessible. As far as I know, there has been no plans to actually change our money. Please visit my blog and vote. The poll will be open until the middle of next month. I plan to blog about the results and send them to national blindness organizations and the treasury department. I think that they need to know what the blind community needs before they make any changes. http://blind-gal.blogspot.com Alena --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups MacVisionaries group. To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Off Topic: Poll on how to make paper money accessible
The Canadian approach, also known as a waste of taxpayer money, was to put braille on the bills. One full braille cell representing $5, 2 for $10, 3 for $20, and 4 for $50. The braille flattens in no time at all and is virtually useless unless you have a new crisp bill. HTH, Everett On 24-Mar-09, at 5:45 PM, Greg Kearney wrote: I don't think this requires a technological solution. Australia has currency that is both accessible, nearly indestructible short of burning, and has never been counterfeited. Here is how theirs work: Each bill is a different color and a different length. The bills are $5, $10, $20 and $100 the $1 and $2 are coins. Blind Citizens of Australia makes a give away a small plastic device that you place any bill into and then fold the bill over the top. The device has marking to indicate the bills value based on how long the bill is. The bills themselves are made from a plastic material that can be wash, folded and can not be torn. Each bill has a little clear window in it which is a different shape and texture so even if you don't have one of the BCA devices you could still tell the bills apart by touch. Persons with color perception can just use the different colors of the bills. It's simple efective and secure. Greg Kearney 535 S. Jackson St. Casper, Wyoming 82601 307-224-4022 gkear...@gmail.com On Mar 24, 2009, at 12:12 PM, Jessi Rathwell wrote: dude, I went to that presentation too!!! very, very interesting!!! I can't wait til this becomes available! On 24-Mar-09, at 11:06 AM, Chris Blouch wrote: Well, since we're already somewhat off topic, one of the most amazing presentations I went to at CSUN was a product called SeeScan from a company called iVisit. It uses a camera image to do object recognition based on pictures. In the demo they laid out a bunch of stuff such as cereal boxes, CDs, US currency and all they did was aim the camera to have it read off what it was. They ran it on some small computer about the size of an old-school walkman tape player about 1x5x7 and a USB camera. It apparently can handle differing angles, orientations and lighting automatically and completes the acquisition and recognition about 4 times a second. So pretty much as soon as they aimed it at a $5 bill it started saying five dollar bill over and over until they aimed it at something else. It can even handle partially obscured objects such as a credit card that is partly under a piece of paper. They tested it with 10 blind users and had 100% success identifying objects. I asked them about scalability since I might want to have a whole grocery store worth of objects loaded up. They said it can handle about 10,000 images in a single database. You can swap out databases and each image takes about 10K after processing (100MB for 10,000 objects). They are hoping there will be online community swaps of databases so you can share what you've already stored. It can 'learn' a new object in about 4 seconds. You just aim it at the object and hit the learn button and then associate some text with the object. The work is being done as part of a grant from the US Veterans Admin (I think) so they said once it's out of the lab it should be cheap because the research costs don't have to be recouped by the manufacturer. They also have a client/server version working with a cell phone camera and a remote processing server. Sorry for the off-topic but this was pretty incredible and it seemed few people came to their presentation. CB alena.roberts2...@gmail.com wrote: I am taking a poll on my blog on how to make U.S. paper currency accessible to the blind. In September of last year, a judge ordered the treasury to make the money accessible. As far as I know, there has been no plans to actually change our money. Please visit my blog and vote. The poll will be open until the middle of next month. I plan to blog about the results and send them to national blindness organizations and the treasury department. I think that they need to know what the blind community needs before they make any changes. http://blind-gal.blogspot.com Alena --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups MacVisionaries group. To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Off Topic: Poll on how to make paper money accessible
Right. This is a far better (practical) solution. I only mentioned the object detection because detecting denominations of US currency was one of the ways the object recognition was demonstrated. Canadian currency has adopted large raised ink numbers which keeps the different bills the same size but it's probably more error prone than the AU solution. CB Greg Kearney wrote: I don't think this requires a technological solution. Australia has currency that is both accessible, nearly indestructible short of burning, and has never been counterfeited. Here is how theirs work: Each bill is a different color and a different length. The bills are $5, $10, $20 and $100 the $1 and $2 are coins. Blind Citizens of Australia makes a give away a small plastic device that you place any bill into and then fold the bill over the top. The device has marking to indicate the bills value based on how long the bill is. The bills themselves are made from a plastic material that can be wash, folded and can not be torn. Each bill has a little clear window in it which is a different shape and texture so even if you don't have one of the BCA devices you could still tell the bills apart by touch. Persons with color perception can just use the different colors of the bills. It's simple efective and secure. Greg Kearney 535 S. Jackson St. Casper, Wyoming 82601 307-224-4022 gkear...@gmail.com On Mar 24, 2009, at 12:12 PM, Jessi Rathwell wrote: dude, I went to that presentation too!!! very, very interesting!!! I can't wait til this becomes available! On 24-Mar-09, at 11:06 AM, Chris Blouch wrote: Well, since we're already somewhat off topic, one of the most amazing presentations I went to at CSUN was a product called SeeScan from a company called iVisit. It uses a camera image to do object recognition based on pictures. In the demo they laid out a bunch of stuff such as cereal boxes, CDs, US currency and all they did was aim the camera to have it read off what it was. They ran it on some small computer about the size of an old-school walkman tape player about 1x5x7 and a USB camera. It apparently can handle differing angles, orientations and lighting automatically and completes the acquisition and recognition about 4 times a second. So pretty much as soon as they aimed it at a $5 bill it started saying five dollar bill over and over until they aimed it at something else. It can even handle partially obscured objects such as a credit card that is partly under a piece of paper. They tested it with 10 blind users and had 100% success identifying objects. I asked them about scalability since I might want to have a whole grocery store worth of objects loaded up. They said it can handle about 10,000 images in a single database. You can swap out databases and each image takes about 10K after processing (100MB for 10,000 objects). They are hoping there will be online community swaps of databases so you can share what you've already stored. It can 'learn' a new object in about 4 seconds. You just aim it at the object and hit the learn button and then associate some text with the object. The work is being done as part of a grant from the US Veterans Admin (I think) so they said once it's out of the lab it should be cheap because the research costs don't have to be recouped by the manufacturer. They also have a client/server version working with a cell phone camera and a remote processing server. Sorry for the off-topic but this was pretty incredible and it seemed few people came to their presentation. CB alena.roberts2...@gmail.com wrote: I am taking a poll on my blog on how to make U.S. paper currency accessible to the blind. In September of last year, a judge ordered the treasury to make the money accessible. As far as I know, there has been no plans to actually change our money. Please visit my blog and vote. The poll will be open until the middle of next month. I plan to blog about the results and send them to national blindness organizations and the treasury department. I think that they need to know what the blind community needs before they make any changes. http://blind-gal.blogspot.com Alena --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups MacVisionaries group. To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Off Topic: Poll on how to make paper money accessible
Yes, it's simple and effective and the cure. But, must I remind you ... This is AMERICA, MAN! Mark BurningHawk Skype and Twitter: BurningHawk1969 MSN: burninghawk1...@hotmail.com My home page: http://MarkBurningHawk.net/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups MacVisionaries group. To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Off Topic: Poll on how to make paper money accessible
Okay, this is getting tiresome… Many of you already know what I'm about to say… smile To those who don't, or whom don't care, yet should, please do close this topic immediately!!! Okay, just so you all know, the next person who deliberately initiates an Off-topic thread here with the exception of John's notes on his weather predicament, -will be banned. I don't care if you put OT in the subject line. That does not make this sort of thing okay! Stop posting things you know are not on topic for this list. smile Unless it's absolutely an emergency / life threatening; if it's off topic, DO NOT POST IT HERE!!! Smiles, Cara :)--- View my Online Portfolio at: http://www.onemodelplace.com/CaraQuinn On Mar 23, 2009, at 6:20 PM, alena.roberts2...@gmail.com wrote: I am taking a poll on my blog on how to make U.S. paper currency accessible to the blind. In September of last year, a judge ordered the treasury to make the money accessible. As far as I know, there has been no plans to actually change our money. Please visit my blog and vote. The poll will be open until the middle of next month. I plan to blog about the results and send them to national blindness organizations and the treasury department. I think that they need to know what the blind community needs before they make any changes. http://blind-gal.blogspot.com Alena --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups MacVisionaries group. To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Off Topic: Poll on how to make paper money accessible
Hi, In Canada there is a Bank Note Reader which is offered through CNIB and the Royal Cnadian Mint free of charge. Thanks, Alex, On 23-Mar-09, at 7:26 PM, Richie Gardenhire wrote: Alena, There was a petition from a member of the American Council of the Blind urging members and nonmenbers to come on board and let the US Treadury that we will pursue this matter. They won their suit against the United States Treasury, and ongoing efforts have been under way to ensure that the decision rendered by the court will be carried out. President Obama is aware of the court decision and he, along with his Secretary of the Treasury have been notified by the court regarding its decision. Richie Gardenhire, Anchorage, Alaska. On Mar 23, 2009, at 5:20 PM, alena.roberts2...@gmail.com wrote: I am taking a poll on my blog on how to make U.S. paper currency accessible to the blind. In September of last year, a judge ordered the treasury to make the money accessible. As far as I know, there has been no plans to actually change our money. Please visit my blog and vote. The poll will be open until the middle of next month. I plan to blog about the results and send them to national blindness organizations and the treasury department. I think that they need to know what the blind community needs before they make any changes. http://blind-gal.blogspot.com Alena --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups MacVisionaries group. To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: Off Topic: Poll on how to make paper money accessible
Cara, I would urge you to take a more liberal stance in what your requesting. As your post below is it self hypocritical. Previously there was leniency regarding new breakthroughs. Many of these systems are not currently Mac based, however it's never known how they may effect or interact with the future OSX. I have read as many post regarding operation of the new list in the last few weeks as I have pointers. Personally I would make the suggestion that we become more aware of our delete key.I will leave it to your discression weather or not you would like to remove me from the list.I would also like to thank the list members for the information they have bestowed on me. Thanks, Pete -Original Message- From: macvisionaries@googlegroups.com [mailto:macvisionar...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Cara Quinn Sent: Tuesday, March 24, 2009 5:41 PM To: macvisionaries@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Off Topic: Poll on how to make paper money accessible Okay, this is getting tiresome. Many of you already know what I'm about to say. smile To those who don't, or whom don't care, yet should, please do close this topic immediately!!! Okay, just so you all know, the next person who deliberately initiates an Off-topic thread here with the exception of John's notes on his weather predicament, -will be banned. I don't care if you put OT in the subject line. That does not make this sort of thing okay! Stop posting things you know are not on topic for this list. smile Unless it's absolutely an emergency / life threatening; if it's off topic, DO NOT POST IT HERE!!! Smiles, Cara :)--- View my Online Portfolio at: http://www.onemodelplace.com/CaraQuinn On Mar 23, 2009, at 6:20 PM, alena.roberts2...@gmail.com wrote: I am taking a poll on my blog on how to make U.S. paper currency accessible to the blind. In September of last year, a judge ordered the treasury to make the money accessible. As far as I know, there has been no plans to actually change our money. Please visit my blog and vote. The poll will be open until the middle of next month. I plan to blog about the results and send them to national blindness organizations and the treasury department. I think that they need to know what the blind community needs before they make any changes. http://blind-gal.blogspot.com Alena --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups MacVisionaries group. To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
