Patent ID: 8036895

Claim:
A system for reading text to a user, the system comprises: a portable handheld device including a camera and a transducer for rendering sound, the portable handheld device configure for: acquiring images through the camera of scenes in an environment that the portable handheld device operates in; sending over a communication channel, a representation of an acquired image of a scene to an external, remote computer system and user settings and navigation commands; and the external remote computer system configured to: communicate with the handheld device; receive the acquired image, the user settings and the navigation commands, perform optical character recognition processing on the acquired image in accordance with the user settings; send to the handheld device results of the optical character recognition processing, the results sent in accordance with the navigation commands, which control how the external, remote computer system processes the results of optical character recognition processing of the acquired image; the portable handheld device further configured to: render speech corresponding to recognized text through the transducer of the portable handheld device.