Patent ID: 8249309

Claim:
A computer program product embodied on a computer readable medium for causing a computing device of a portable reading machine for visually disabled persons to detect poor imaging conditions comprising instructions for causing the computing device to: receive an image of sufficient resolution to distinguish lines of text but not necessarily of sufficient resolution to distinguish individual characters; process the image to determine imaging light conditions under which the image was taken, by instructions to: examine contrast characteristics of different parts of the image by examining a distribution of light intensities across the image, with regions of the image that have poor contrast characterized by a relatively narrow distribution of light intensity values compared to regions of good contrast; determine whether poor contrast is present due to lighting that is too dim or too bright; and determine whether glare conditions saturate the image and blur or obscure text that may be present in the image; generate directions to convey to an operator of the portable reading machine based on processing the image; and apply the generated directions to a text to speech synthesis module to provide an audio report of determined imaging lighting conditions as one of the imaging conditions and generated directions to the operator.