Access to a printer, a braille embosser and a scanner is also required. DRS uses Duxbury Braille translation software. The market has been flooded with OCR packages and scanners selling at a variety of prices. Be careful in the selection of a scanner, it is crucial to the text conversion program. Do not make the assumption that only a black and white scanner is required to scan printed material.
Many textbooks use color as a method of highlighting important concepts.
A black and white scanner may not pick up colored and highlighted characters. These characters would then not appear in a scanned document. A color scanner will accurately scan the widest variety of text formats. A flat bed scanner is also recommended. Manually controlling the angle and the speed of a hand held scanner is difficult and time consuming.