Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

The vOICe is available globally, but not commercially. Users basically assemble their own setups from commercially available components that they may buy from any third-party supplier. The vOICe for Windows as well as The vOICe for Android for smartphones and tablets are all available as free downloads for non-commercial personal and academic use. The vOICe's privately owned technology is not currently for sale, and it is not commercially distributed, nor are there plans to change that in the foreseeable future.

It is intended to always have free versions of The vOICe for Windows and The vOICe for Android. In the future some sort of "pro" version or specific enhancements might be offered for sale, such that the revenue would allow for the further development and improvement of The vOICe technology. However, there are no concrete plans for that yet. First we want to establish The vOICe as the leading vision technology for the totally blind, in part through an open collaboration with external (research) partners.

Just say it: "O I C". O I C? Oh I see!

You don't have to register. However, some specialized functions will be unlocked only to registered users.

No, at the present time only (American) English is supported.

Yes, The vOICe can be used by blind children, but benefit had not been established, even though in general best results are expected with young blind children in view of their large brain plasticity. Technically, one can think of using a netbook or tablet to limit weight - as a rule of thumb, children should not wear more than some 10 or 15 percent of their body weight in a backpack.

One should also be fully aware of possible ethical concerns in working with blind children.

Yes, The vOICe can be used and is used by early-blind and congenitally blind (born blind) people. Interviews with early-blind as well as late-blind users of The vOICe can be found on this website.

What is normally called the visual cortex gets activated by tactile and auditory stimuli particularly in early-blind people. One could therefore argue that early-blind people may have more brain area available for advanced auditory processing such as could benefit good use of The vOICe. One the other hand, one could also argue that late-blind people benefit from their knowledge and memories of prior vision, as well as the existing and well-developed visual processing modules in their brain, since the information as presented by The vOICe is still visual even while encoded in sound. Right now the relative "weight" of these arguments is not known, and it is not known if The vOICe better suits early-blind than late-blind people or vice versa.

Use of The vOICe does not require the eyes, so in that respect it can work for blindness due to any eye disease or trauma, as long as there is still more or less normal hearing. So The vOICe can in principle be used by people who are blind due to Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP), Macular Degeneration (MD), Stargardt disease, Leber Congenital Amaurosis (LCA), Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP), optic nerve atrophy, central retinal vein occlusion (CRVO) or any other eye condition, including enucleation. It is not yet known what additional limitations for use of The vOICe arise with blindness due to various brain conditions such as a damaged visual cortex (cortical blindness), but even there it is expected that generally at least some functional use can be made of the visual information that is now encoded in sound, again provided that there is more or less normal hearing (with or without hearing aids).

Occasionally, the question gets asked if The vOICe can be used for treatment of autistic people, particularly autistic children. The underlying idea is that it might do "something" to counter weak cross-modal binding and improve sensory integration, e.g., in treating Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD), or perhaps simply appeal to autists due to the repetitive nature of the soundscapes from live webcam views. However, none of this has been thoroughly investigated, and therefore one cannot exclude the possibility of negative effects. As has been stated elsewhere, The vOICe is not currently intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease or condition.

Similarly, one could hypothesize that a cross-modal activation of visual and other brain centers through sound might cause effects that overlap with those more traditionally obtained through neuromodulation by electrode stimulation (e.g., nervus vagus stimulation in depression treatment), because cross-modal activation is technically speaking a form of cross-modal neuromodulation (and more). Audio-visual stimulation has also been proposed for improvement of visual perception in patients with hemianopia, and one could speculate about vision training applications in recovery of sight after stroke. Also, it has been found that cross-modal auditory/visual deactivation (inhibition) is impaired in people with  Alzheimer disease, and one could speculate that cross-modal training might help alleviate the symptoms by learning to control and selectively focus brain activity in task-relevant areas. Hemi-spatial neglect is another area where supplementary camera-based auditory cues might help, as is neuro-rehabilitation in general. Parkinson’s disease is another example where crossmodal stimuli using non-visual cues have been suggested to overcome freezing of gait (e.g.,  Effect of Rhythmic Auditory Stimulation on Gait in Parkinsonian Patients with and without Freezing of Gait). However, much of this is awaiting further investigation, while one can speculate about many things, even usage for "cognitive enhancement", so in general the answer is "maybe".

If you know of any findings on therapeutic or other effects relating to image to sound mapping in areas other than blindness, e.g., as a means for non-invasive neuromodulation for treating various neurological disorders (neurorehabilitation) or psychological disorders, then please report.

The global distribution of The vOICe over the Internet, in combination with a user group, can also be seen as an example of how telerehabilitation may in the future be implemented.

The vOICe for Windows only runs under Microsoft Windows, but owners of a Apple Macintosh MacBook with an iSight camera have reportedly been able to run The vOICe in Microsoft Windows on their Mac, with video captured from the iSight camera.

Yes, but if you have only a single sound card on an older version of Windows (before Windows 2000 and XP), you may need to silence The vOICe manually by pressing Control F2 each time that you want to hear the screen reader: under Windows-95 audio conflicts result when two or more audio applications try to use the same sound card at the same time. Only under Windows 2000 and XP or later, or Windows-98 and later with a WDM sound driver, or else by using the  SB Live! (Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live!) sound card for Windows-95 and later, these conflicts should no longer occur. Contrary to muting by F2, pressing Control F2 not only mutes The vOICe, but also releases the audio device for use by other audio applications such as screen readers or .wav sound players.

On older systems, using  JAWS for Windows?
When using the JAWS for Windows (JFW) screen reader from Henter-Joyce, JAWS may not speak while The vOICe is running, until you select The vOICe via Alt+tab and silence it via Control F2. Now you can indeed navigate all menus and dialogs of The vOICe for Windows using JAWS! Pressing Control F2 again will turn on the soundscapes. Turning on The vOICe sound while JAWS is still speaking will give an error dialog from The vOICe in case of an audio conflict, but you can press the Retry button after JAWS has stopped speaking this dialog. To stop JAWS from speaking the whole dialog before you can continue, you can usually just press the Escape key or the Control key to interrupt JAWS, after which pressing the Enter key still corresponds to the Retry button of The vOICe. It has been found that in some cases this may not work directly, and you may then have to pause JAWS output with Control P in JAWS to make the Retry button of The vOICe succeed in getting access to the audio device. The vOICe Learning Edition has been prepared to work well with the factory default settings of JAWS. Any other JAWS configuration settings may cause unwanted side effects in navigating The vOICe dialogs using JAWS.

The vOICe is already conservative in its default settings for frequency range, taking into account that elderly people cannot hear well above, say, 6 kHz (6000 Hz). The often-cited human hearing range of 20 Hz to 20 kHz is a best result that some only young people have, and not very meaningful for practical purposes. By default The vOICe therefore uses frequencies within a 500 Hz to 5 kHZ range to accommodate normal age related hearing losses. However, for people with specific hearing deficits it is possible to further adapt the frequency range used by The vOICe, by changing the lowest frequency and highest frequency in the menu Edit | Soundscape Preferences. For instance, a person with high-frequency hearing loss may try setting a highest frequency of 4 kHz (4000 Hz) or 3 kHz (3000 Hz), and optionally, for a constant ratio between highest and lowest frequency also correspondingly set the lowest frequency to 400 Hz or 300 Hz, respectively. If desired one can also adapt the number of frequency slots used (by default 64).

Yes! Stereo panning eases perception of the left-to-right scan position, so that has now become the default setting in The vOICe for Windows, but it is definitely not required. The vOICe for Windows can be set to mono sound, and a reference click at the beginning of each soundscape scan then serves to indicate the sound scanning position. Without that click, you wouldn't know left from right in the soundscapes. The relevant sound settings for stereo and click can be changed from the Edit | Visual Sound Preferences menu, or, if that menu is not accessible to your screen reader, it can also be done via the keyboard shortcuts Alt+e s b to select the menu and toggle the binaural (stereo) setting and Alt+e s c to toggle the reference click on and off.

Yes, bone conduction devices can be used with The vOICe, but especially the mediocre sound quality (as compared to regular headphones), plus the fact that bone conduction devices offer little or no stereo effect, in most cases makes bone conduction devices less attractive. The frequency response of bone conduction devices is typically limited to less than 4 kHz. However, bone conduction may suit certain types of hearing loss if not deafness where (blind or deaf-blind) people can still hear through bone conduction, which bypasses part of the hearing system, namely the outer and middle ears. Blind and deaf-blind people affected by such causes of hearing loss may thus still benefit from a combination of a bone conduction device and The vOICe running in mono with reference clicks for each image scan (these are user options that can be set). An advantage of using bone conduction with The vOICe even with normal hearing can be that there is nothing physically obstructing regular environmental sound input, whereas most regular headphones to some extent affect sound coming in via the pinnae. This "ears-free" advantage must be weighed against the lower sound quality.

This is not known yet. In principle, a person with Usher syndrome may receive a cochlear implant to regain hearing. The vOICe can then in turn be used to receive visual input via the cochlear implant. Cochlear implants do not quite offer normal hearing though, and it is not yet known how compatible The vOICe is with the use of cochlear implants. Interested people who already have a cochlear implant can give it a try and listen to some of The vOICe sample sounds on this website. The vOICe settings may also be changed to better suit the cochlear implant characteristics, for instance by adapting the frequency range in the menu Edit | Visual Sound Preferences.

Going into standby mode or suspend mode when the cover is closed is the default behaviour for many notebook PCs, while this is clearly undesirable for wearing The vOICe in a mobile setup. Normally, with modern notebook PCs, you can go to Control Panel | Power Options | Advanced tab, and in that dialog you should find a drop-down list box labelled "When I close the lid of my portable computer" (or equivalent). The option that you must select is "Do nothing" (or equivalent), instead of "Stand by" or "Hibernate".

With some older notebook PCs, the behaviour may be changed via the (startup) BIOS settings. Details vary with brand and type of computer, because the BIOS is not part of Windows, but typically one should look for a "Cover close" related item in the "Power" or "Power savings" section of the BIOS. On still other notebook PCs you may need to change a so-called "battery powered profile" into an "AC powered profile" such that closing the cover will not enter the "Suspend" mode, but only turn the screen off. Sighted assistance may be required to access and modify any BIOS settings.

This can happen if you have camera software running in the background, which then locks the camera for all other camera applications. For example, check with Task Manager if there is a running process named "SonicFocusTray.exe" (versions of which are known to lock the built-in webcam of notebook PCs). If so, kill it, and then try The vOICe again. If this fixed the problem, uninstall the corresponding program named "Sonic Focus" (or for instance "ASUS Sonic Focus").

Yes, provided that your scanner or digital still image camera has a TWAIN driver. The vOICe can acquire and sonify images from most TWAIN compliant devices via the File menu, Acquire and Sonify option. In case you have more than one TWAIN device, you can select the one that you want to use from the Drivers menu.

Remarks:

• For best results with line drawings, plots and graphs, use the 1-bit (black and white) scan mode with your scanner software. This will not only result in, obviously, a pure black and white image, but it will also activate special image processing by The vOICe for preserving thin lines in spite of the much reduced image size as used for the auditory display. In addition, the inverse video mode will now automatically be selected if the background is white. In scan modes other than pure black and white, no such processing is performed and the inevitable information reduction may cause very small or thin items to vanish, but shading will now be better preserved. In other words, different settings will suit different purposes.

• User reports indicate that in using a flatbed HP scanner, while launching HP Precision Scan, there is a checkbox asking about selecting parts of the page or viewing the page first. With this checkbox checked, which is the default, the image does not automatically go to The vOICe for sonification. Alt-v will toggle the status of this check box or one can tab to it and press space to toggle it.

• Not all "TWAIN compliant" scanners fully support the TWAIN standard, because the TWAIN standard requires only a subset of functions for compliance. Scanners that support only a subset of the TWAIN standard may give problems in acquiring images directly from The vOICe.

• If you put a batch file named voicetwain.bat in the folder where the executable of The vOICe is stored, The vOICe will upon acquiring a scan with Control Q also save the scan in this folder as a 300 dpi image file vOICeTWAIN.bmp, and next run voicetwain.bat for further processing (to be defined by you). It is completely up to you to decide what to put in the batch file in order to process vOICeTWAIN.bmp and optionally output to vOICe.ocr for speech feedback. The whole procedure is similar to the "Control R" method for saving and processing a video frame as described on the OCR page, but it allows for the much higher 300 dpi scan resolution that is typically needed for good OCR results with complete book pages, whereas the "Control R" method with recognize.bat is rather meant for detecting short text phrases in lower resolution video frames, such as labels or street names.

Yes, by using The vOICe built-in Internet Sonification Browser, which you can activate by pressing Control U.

There are at least four different ways to do this:

1. The first and most obvious possibility is to point the camera to the area on your computer screen where some other program has displayed the graph. If it is a dark line on a bright background, then you should use function key F5 for negative video because you want to hear the line and not the window background! However, the quality of the result will probably not be great because PC cameras are not designed to work well with the special light coming from a computer or television screen, and video interference can lead to banded images with CRT screens. It is worth trying though.

2. The second possibility is to make use of function key F9 which toggles sonification of the area around your mouse pointer. This allows you to move over the screen with your mouse and hear anything displayed, including graphs, icons or whatever. Again the negative video with F5 can be handy to make dark lines on a bright background audible. A seeming disadvantage can be that the graph may not have the same size as the sonified area around the mouse pointer, but this can often be solved by resizing the window containing the graph.

3. The third possibility is to import a BMP of GIF format image file containing the graph. It will depend on other software whether you have some way to capture and save a graph as a suitable BMP or GIF image file, but once you have that, you can load the image file into The vOICe for Windows via the File | Sonify Image File(s) menu option.

4. The fourth possibility lets you enter the mathematical formula of a function, such as 5*sin(x), directly and have The vOICe for Windows plot and sound it for you. This feature resides under function key F8, and the dialog that pops up allows you to set x and y ranges in function plotting.

Point the camera to the drawing or graph in the book, from a close range of say ten or twenty centimeters. Switch to negative video using F5, assuming that we have mainly dark lines on white paper. Adjust lens focus and camera position for best results. If necessary, slow down the soundscape scans using F3 or Control Alt F3.

This can be done simply by pointing your camera to the television screen, but video interference may lead to images with black bands for CRT screens, because your computer screen and your television probably do not run synchronized. Apart from this, it is a bit of a fuss to properly align your camera to get a full view on the television screen, and the typically non-flat CRT screen causes some additional image distortion.

Therefore, a much better solution is to use a television card for your PC. For instance, The vOICe for Windows has been tested to work well with the  Hauppauge WinTV PCI card, which contains a cable-ready television tuner and video digitizer, and drivers that are compatible with The vOICe for Windows. Usage, after proper installation of a TV card and its driver software:

1. Run your TV card software to select a desired TV channel. Then quit this program, which will release the video drivers so that The vOICe can access them.

2. Start The vOICe for Windows, and select the TV card video driver from the Drivers menu. The vOICe will now generate soundscapes for the television channel that you had previously selected, without banding artefacts and without the difficulty of properly positioning the camera.

3. You can turn the TV broadcast sound ON or OFF by double-clicking the Volume Control on the taskbar to activate the mixer dialog, and then using the Line-In Mute checkbox. This toggle has no effect on The vOICe's soundscape muting. The Volume Control can also be accessed as the file C:\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Accessories\Multimedia\Volume Control.

4. If you have both a TV card and a PC camera connected, you can switch between them dynamically by selecting the appropriate video driver listed in The vOICe's Drivers menu.

5. To switch channels, you will have to quit The vOICe and use your TV card software again to select another channel.

Applications can be in training for real-life soundscapes without the potential risks involved in orientation and mobility using a portable set-up with a camera. You can just lie down on the couch and enjoy the complexities of real-life vision. Of course, this alone is not enough, but it forms yet another training mode that can complement the built-in exercise mode and the real-life feedback of moving around with a portable set-up in a safe environment.

One should keep in mind that the video in TV broadcasts is not only extremely complicated, but also often involves sudden jumps in camera locations, so there is no continuity of context like when you are walking around. Moreover, it does not provide any tactile feedback. Nevertheless, it may help the brain to build a kind self-consistent mental map. Also, the gross visual features are always open to conscious mental analysis in view of the simplicity of The vOICe mapping principles.

The vOICe does directly support importing movie files (only static image files).

Yes, provided that you have the MP3 extension BladeEnc.dll installed. The vOICe for Windows can be used with this MP3 encoder developed by Tord Jansson, in the form of a DLL file named BladeEnc.dll. This file is available from the BladeEnc  dowload page. At the time of this writing, the download file was named BEnc-0942-Win-P4-dll.zip, but this filename may change with later version numbers. Unzip this file and move the resulting BladeEnc.dll file to your Windows directory or to the directory where The vOICe for Windows executable voice.exe is stored. When you restart The vOICe, a menu option for MP3 will be available from the menu File | Capture Single Frame as. Now you can have The vOICe save a soundscape in MP3 format simply by pressing Control Alt S or by traversing the File menu. This will generate a vOICe.bmp image file and a vOICe.mp3 sound file for the current video frame.

You can readily import images in the popular image formats BMP, JPEG or GIF, but also ICO (icon file), EMF (enhanced metafile), or WMF (windows metafile). GIF support was added under an LZW license from Unisys. TIFF input support is available as an optional TIFF extension.

You can readily save images in BMP format. JPEG output support is available as an optional JPEG extension.

Yes, provided that you have The vOICe TIFF extension vOICeTIFF.dll installed. The zipped DLL file for this TIFF add-on can be downloaded directly from the vOICeTIFF.zip link (file size about 100K). Unzip this file and move the resulting vOICeTIFF.dll file to your Windows directory or to the directory where The vOICe for Windows executable voice.exe is stored. When you restart The vOICe, you will find that you can now load TIFF image files with the filename extension ".tif" or ".tiff" from the File menu, Acquire and Sonify. This add-on option for The vOICe for Windows is based in part on the LIBTIFF library, and has been added under an LZW license from Unisys.

Load yes, but you can save JPEG only if you have The vOICe JPEG extension vOICeJPG.dll installed. The zipped DLL file for this JPEG add-on can be downloaded directly from the vOICeJPG.zip link (file size about 100K). Unzip this file and move the resulting vOICeJPG.dll file to your Windows directory or to the directory where The vOICe for Windows executable voice.exe is stored. When you restart The vOICe, you will find that for instance pressing Control S saves a video frame not only as vOICe.bmp but also as vOICe.jpg. The items listed in the File menu are changed accordingly. This software is based in part on the work of the Independent JPEG Group.

For other image formats, you can use one of the many popular bitmap editors to load an image (in .ppn, .png or whatever format), and then save the image in for instance .bmp format from the "Save As..." menu item. The .bmp image can then be read into The vOICe Learning Edition. No bitmap editing is involved here in using the bitmap editor, so blind users should be able to do this.

To some extent yes, by invoking an external OCR engine. Work and progress in this area is described on the mobile OCR page.

Yes, you can do this with any image and sound file as saved for instance by pressing Control S. Better still, The vOICe for Windows includes integrated e-mail support. Press Control M to enter The vOICe mail dialog.

By default, The vOICe upon its first run will create a program shortcut named "The vOICe Learning Edition" or "The vOICe for Windows" in your desktop menu Start | Programs, along with a "Control Alt v" hotkey for launching The vOICe. This is intended behaviour. However, under some international keyboard mappings this hotkey may become associated with the "Alt Gr v" key combination and thereby interfere with normal keyboard use for entering special characters such as the "@" sign. This may for instance occur in Hungarian, Polish and Croatian/Slovenian keyboard mappings. In case you run into this problem, you can either disable The vOICe's "Control Alt v" hotkey altogether via the menu Help | Create/Delete hotkey, or you can manually redefine the hotkey: go to the desktop menu Start | Programs, right-click on the shortcut labeled "The vOICe for Windows", and select "Properties". This should give you a dialog that lets you (re)define the key combination for the hotkey ("Shortcut key") that launches The vOICe.

This message suggests that your video capture device does not support the default video formats or video compression used by The vOICe and supported by Windows. Assuming that you have a WDM video capture device (listed as such in The vOICe Drivers menu), go to the menu Edit | Audio/Video Preferences | Video Format, and try a few other capture resolutions and pixel compression formats. The vOICe and Windows do not natively support MJPG compression that some camera glasses and built-in webcams use, but The vOICe works fine with YUV2 encoding (note that it is sometimes necessary to first disconnect any external video capture devices in order to have a built-in webcam recognized). Microsoft does not directly support MJPG compression for Video for Windows (VFW) applications such as The vOICe.

As an alternative to setting a non-MJPG compression, which may not even be supported by your camera, it is possible to add support for MJPG compression to your PC by installing a third-party codec such as the free  ffdshow. With the latter, during installation include the VFW interface (already selected by default). After installation, run ffdshow's VFW configuration, and in the Decoder tab select (click on) codecs and change the MJPEG entry from disabled to libavcodec, and press OK. From now on you should be able to run The vOICe in combination with MJPG compression. It is reportedly very difficult to navigate the ffdshow GUI with a screen reader, and you can instead turn on the MJPEG codecs by downloading and running the registry file ffdshow_mjpg_on.reg. (If, for whatever reason, you later want to turn the ffdshow MJPEG codecs off, you can do that with the complementary registry file ffdshow_mjpg_off.reg.)

In case you also make use of Amcap, you might find that its preview slows down to a crawl (almost freezing) after several seconds, because of incompatibility between Amcap and ffdshow. In that case, start ffdshow's Video decoder configuration, in the left pane select DirectShow control, and in the right pane add the name "amcap.exe" to the checked entry "Don't use ffdshow in", such that ffdshow will no longer interfere with Amcap.

Your screen display must be set to 8, 16, 24 or 32 bit mode. I.e., using 256 colors or more. The 4-bit (16 color) display mode is not supported because this would give results of unacceptably low quality.

If the message occurs when loading a BMP image file, then it means that this particular BMP variant is not supported.

Use stereo headphones, not loudspeakers. Press Control F1 to reset all audio parameters to their defaults.

If you got an error message box while trying to start the mouse pointer sonification through Control F9, this means that your sound card does not support this function. Otherwise, verify the settings of Microsoft Volume Control, and make sure that a control with a name relating to "MIDI" or "FM synthesizer" is not muted (check box) and has volume up (slider). The actual name of the control depends on the sound card you have.

Using the The Creative Labs Video Blaster webcam II?
The Creative Labs Video Blaster webcam II may show sudden jumps in brightness and contrast. This is caused by its automatic lighting selection, and this can be confusing in combination with the low frame rates of The vOICe for Windows. It can also affect proper color identification (Say color option). You can easily fix the problem by going to the Edit | Audio/Video Preferences | Video Source | Advanced menu, to uncheck Automatic Lighting. Then you can select either Normal, Medium or Low Lighting as appropriate for your environment. A similar procedure may also apply to other brands of cameras, although the details of the menus will generally be different.

This is relatively common with CCD cameras if the physical (maximum) resolution of the image sensor is not an integer multiple of the chosen video format. CCD cameras often combine neighbouring pixels in a technique called "binning" in order to get a better signal to noise ratio, and they may use a subset of the physically available pixels if the binning does not give a nice number match between the chosen video format and the sensor resolution. The result is then an apparent visual magnification, similar to zoom. One may in such cases want to manually choose a video format that gives the maximum view (opening angle): The vOICe has no way of knowing the physical resolution of the image sensor, so its default video format need not always be a best match to the physical resolution of the image sensor.

Using the The Creative Labs Video Blaster webcam II?
It has been found that some MSAPI compliant speech programs interfere with the Direct Memory Access (DMA) of the Creative Labs Video Blaster webcam II. Solution: set the camera driver to "Don't do DMA" via Control Panel | System | Hardware tab | Device Manager button | Imaging devices | Creative Video Blaster Webcam II | Settings | Options | Don't do DMA. Next restart The vOICe for Windows. A similar procedure may also apply to other brands of cameras, although the details of the menus will generally be different.

Point the camera to a vertical edge at the desired focussing distance, and adapt the lens focus to get the most-sudden sound transition: then the edge is in focus for that distance. A smooth sound transition means that the lens is out of focus. Moving the lens focus setting around the point of focus a few times can help to more accurately find the best focus setting by estimating the middle position between two slightly-out-of-focus settings. This is how the sighted do it too. Preferably use a vertical edge having a dark (silent) area on the left side and a bright (loud) area on the right side of this edge, because you can more accurately hear out loudness transitions from silence to sound than vice versa.

By default, many notebook PCs apply the "Portable/Laptop" power scheme, where voltage and clock frequency of the CPU are adaptively adjusted within a split second, depending on momentary CPU load. In the case of The vOICe this often means that the CPU switches every second between a low power, low performance mode (low voltage, low clock frequency) and - during soundscape synthesis - a high power high performance mode (high voltage, high clock frequency). This happens even while connected to the mains supply, and need not be optimal for your notebook PC. For mobile battery-powered use of The vOICe, you can try maximizing battery life by going (in Windows XP) to Control Panel | Performance and Maintenance | Power Options tab, and instead of "Portable/Laptop" select "Max Battery", which will generally pick a low performance mode that maximizes battery life at the expense of CPU speed. A nice side effect is that the temperature-controlled fan will less often switch on as less heat is generated, thereby avoiding annoying noise from the fan, and for use in a backpack it somewhat relaxes the ventilation constraints. Whether any particular power saving setting is the best trade-off for your notebook PC is best tried out: obviously it should not cause any hiccups in seeing-with-sound. Vice versa, if your aim is to maximize CPU speed at the expense of battery life, you can select the "Always on" or "Home/Office" power option, which will generally keep the CPU clock frequency at its highest supported value.

Yes, but any camera-related functions will of course be disabled, and after startup the built-in demonstration mode is automatically started. Without a camera, you can import images (via the File menu), plot and hear math functions (F8), make use of the exercise mode (F11), or hear the screen area around the mouse pointer (F9).

Yes, most regular computer stores have PC cameras or webcams in stock nowadays. Just be careful that you get one that fits your computer configuration, because some cameras may only support specific versions of Microsoft Windows, or require a particular type of connector connector. Webcams nowadays typically use the USB bus.

Perhaps you can have the PC camera demonstrated by the computer store. Your personal copy of The vOICe for Windows software easily fits on a memory stick, so you might have that demonstrated too if the computer store is willing to help you with that (they might refuse this though for fear of viruses or other malware).

Do you have  Total Recorder on your system? It is a great tool, but its special audio driver is known to cause problems with The vOICe - even while Total Recorder itself is not running. The vOICe may hang or crash when it uses the Total Recorder driver. If you can still reach The vOICe Drivers menu, select other drivers for Audio In, Audio Out and Mixer. Otherwise, uninstall Total Recorder, reboot, check if The vOICe works properly and then select other audio drivers in The vOICe before reinstalling Total Recorder.

You are probably running your system in 8-bit color mode (256 colors) and The vOICe will in that case normally - after giving it permission once - switch automatically to a 16-bit color mode for better shading and to give proper color identification results. It also automatically switches back to the 8-bit color mode upon program exit if 8-bit was the original display mode. However, it appears that some screen readers and other programs cannot quite handle this on some systems, and programs or system may crash as a result of a change in display mode. The vOICe itself senses and adapts to any change in display mode, allowing it to work even with 3D games that often change both resolution and color depth, but not all applications do that.

The workaround is that you first switch to a 16-bit (65536 color) or higher display mode via Control Panel | Display | Settings. Quit and restart any other applications such as screen readers that you may be running, such that they adapt to the new display mode. When your system is already at 16-bit or higher, The vOICe will not change the display mode at startup nor at program exit, and this should prevent any crashes upon program exit for systems that were affected by this problem.

This Windows NT/2000/XP problem should no longer occur in The vOICe v1.48 and later, because The vOICe now includes and supports the PortTalk driver as developed by Craig Peacock. For more information about PortTalk, visit the  beyondlogic.org website.

Mouse area, active window and full screen sonification may miss certain areas on the screen for the following possible reasons:

1. Using RealOne/RealPlayer Video? The RealOne/RealPlayer video window appears to protect content from being copied by not letting third-party applications capture displayed content.

2. Using a GDI+ application? GDI+ is a new display technology introduced by Microsoft that is not downward compatible with their GDI standard. This causes accessibility problems in capturing graphical screen content with for instance several Office XP applications.

The vOICe is a Video for Windows (VfW) compliant application, and although Microsoft WDM contains a VfW wrapper, some settings of the WDM driver of a WDM compliant video capture device are not under VfW control. This includes the choice of WDM capture device in case you have multiple WDM capture drivers, but also the selection of the (analog) video format such as PAL versus NTSC when capturing from analog video sunglasses, and the analog signal type such as composite video or S-video. In such cases, select the Microsoft WDM driver from The vOICe Drivers menu, and then go to the menu Edit | Audio/Video Preferences | Video Source to select NTSC or PAL video format for your capture device. Video sunglasses often only support NTSC (or NTSC_M). In another tab of the same dialog you may also need to change settings to select either composite video or S-video, where the composite video signal may more common with the typical RCA type video connectors that connect video sunglasses to a video capture device.

Note that picking the "wrong" analog video format may also cause various artifacts, including extremely slow response from the user interface when the video capture driver fails to digitize the inappropriate choice of analog video format. See also the related section on saving WDM settings to preserve the settings that work for you.

The vOICe is a Video for Windows (VfW) compliant application, and although Microsoft WDM contains a VfW wrapper, some WDM settings are not under VfW control and The vOICe cannot save those. For instance, you may find that after you select the Microsoft WDM driver from The vOICe Drivers menu, and go to the menu Edit | Audio/Video Preferences | Video Source to select NTSC or PAL video format for your capture device, your new setting is not preserved when you quit and restart The vOICe. To solve this annoying problem, you can make use of a very useful third-party freeware utility from ASVzzz Software named  VideoWDMControl, which allows you to change WDM settings independently from The vOICe, and your new settings will be preserved such that The vOICe will start with the new settings. The selection for NTSC or PAL will be found under the Video Capture Filter button of VideoWDMControl.

VideoWDMControl may also be used to select an external WDM driver based USB video capture device in case your notebook PC includes a non-detachable WDM driver based built-in camera, such that The vOICe will always start trying to connect to the USB video capture device instead of the built-in camera.

The vOICe will not work directly with a mini DV camera (camcorder) and an IEEE-1394 ("i-Link" or "Firewire") card, because it requires Video for Windows compliance. Digital video input via a Firewire card is in general not Video for Windows compliant. Currently there are three alternative ways to use The vOICe with a mini DV camera:

1. Some camcorders offer USB output for a "webcam" mode. When available, use this connection option instead of the Firewire connection.

2. Use the analog output from the camcorder instead of the digital (Firewire) output. You can then capture the analog output via a video capture card. Most video capture cards support Microsoft Video for Windows either directly or via Microsoft's later WDM standard.

3. Use the third-party OrangeWare  WebCamDV software, which should make your camcorder show up as "WebcamDV Capture" in The vOICe Drivers menu, and you can then select this webcam driver. WebCamDV basically makes your camcorder behave as a regular webcam. Alternatively, you can try the third-party program  ffdshow. and select DV compression in the same way as described for adding MJPG support.

A number of users have reported frequent crashes related to "IVVIDEO.DLL". The crashes appear to be caused by a faulty driver installed by Microsoft Netshow. Uninstalling Microsoft Netshow or disabling its video capture driver should fix the problem.

Crashes labelled "VI_DC" relate to a failure while The vOICe attempts to connect to a video capture device driver. In most cases this is because of a broken video capture device driver (try reinstalling the video capture device driver), or because the video capture device does not support Microsoft Video for Windows (e.g., most Firewire devices like many home video cameras). Temporarily disabling the offending video capture driver should fix the problem.

In case you have more than one video capture device, it is also possible to directly select a video capture device via a command line option in the folder containing The vOICe executable

voice.exe -v <i>

where <i> is an integer in the range 0..9.

As a useful independent check to see if a video capture device is properly installed and works with Microsoft Video for Windows, you can download and run vidcap32.exe (about 110K). VidCap is Microsoft's reference utility for checking Video for Windows compatibility. After starting VidCap, go to its Options menu, check "Preview" and select your video capture driver. If VidCap works fine with your video capture device and The vOICe does not, then the problem would seem to be in The vOICe software, but if both VidCap and The vOICe fail with your video capture device, then indeed your video capture device (driver) is not properly installed or it is incompatible with Microsoft Video for Windows.

Sometimes a camera driver does not support the video format requested by The vOICe, such as 176 x 144 or 352 x 288. Normally, a well-behaved camera driver should reject any unsupported format, such that The vOICe can detect this and try another video format. However, some ill-behaved drivers do not reject unsupported video formats and just cause The vOICe to crash or hang at startup without any error message. If you suspect this to be the case, you can try setting an alternative video format before starting The vOICe by means of a registry change. For that purpose, two alternatives are provided here, vOICe160x120NoFoveal.reg for setting a resolution of 160 x 120 with the foveal mapping turned off, and vOICe320x240Foveal.reg for setting a resolution of 320 x 240 with the foveal mapping turned on (the on-screen window will here display half the video resolution, i.e. 160 x 120). Assuming that your camera supports one of these formats, you can download, double-click and accept the changes of one of these registry files, and next start The vOICe. If camera driver problems were the underlying cause of trouble, The vOICe may now start normally, without crashing or hanging.

To avoid that The vOICe detects and sounds the view of your PC's built-in camera (if there is one in your netbook, tablet or notebook PC) instead of the view of your external USB webcam or camera glasses, it is most convenient to first disable the built-in camera by disabling its camera driver in Device Manager. Note: with Asus Eee PCs you may find the option to disable the built-in camera via a right-click on the Asus EeePC Tray Utility icon in the system tray, where you can select "Disable Camera".

Technaxx TX-25 camera glasses are (mostly) UVC compliant, meaning that no driver installation is needed and that they can work with multiple platforms other than Microsoft Windows. However, under Windows and specifically in The vOICe for Windows, you may find that its main 1280 × 720 video format is not listed in Video for Windows programs, while its 320 × 240 and 640 × 480 video formats both show a garbled bottom slice in the camera view. As a workaround, you can download and double-click the registry settings file Technaxx_TX-25_1280x720.reg to set the video format for The vOICe for Windows to the unlisted 1280 × 720 video format. This needs to be re-applied before running The vOICe whenever its video format has changed (e.g. after using another camera, or after pressing Shift F1 for The vOICe default settings). A registry file for the 640 × 480 video format is also available, as a registry settings file Technaxx_TX-25_640x480.reg. The registry changes apply exclusively within the registry area used by The vOICe, making it a safe operation. To prevent crashes caused by incomplete UVC compliance of the Technaxx TX-25 glasses, you may in Device Manager also need to disable the camera drivers of all other cameras connected to your system (the camera driver of the Technaxx TX-25 is listed there as "USB PC Camera" and must remain enabled).

Another issue is that the Technaxx TX-25 glasses only support the MJPEG compression standard, which does not come bundled with Microsoft Windows. However, this can be solved as described in the section on adding MJPG support.

Some video capture device drivers crash when no device is connected, or you may want to disable a driver to prevent that The vOICe selects it by default (e.g., disable the built-in camera). To disable these badly behaved device drivers, go to Control Panel | [System |] [Hardware tab, if there is one |] Device Manager | Imaging devices (or Control Panel | Multimedia | Advanced | Video Capture Devices), select the driver that you wish to disable. Right-click to get the context menu and disable the driver (the relevant option may be in the context menu directly, or else found via the Properties entry). When you next restart The vOICe, it will no longer attempt to load the unwanted or badly behaved driver, and the driver will no longer be listed in the Drivers menu. The above procedure can also be used to enable a video capture device driver again.

This can happen if you are running the oldest version of Windows-95 (not OSR-2) and you have no video capture device connected. A resource leak or memory leak caused by a bug in Windows-95 then gradually consumes all your system resources until your system become unstable. The problem does not exist on Windows-95 OSR-2 and later. Workarounds: either install and connect a video capture device such as a PC camera, or else download and install the Cu-Doodle or SoftCam dummy camera driver which will make Windows believe that you have a camera.

These are acronyms denoting certain "standard" image formats as used with PC cameras in video conferencing. Typical PC camera image formats are

1. QSIF (Quarter SIF): 160 x 120 pixels (NTSC) or 192 X 144 pixels (PAL).
2. QCIF (Quarter CIF): 176 x 144 pixels, defined to run at 29.97 fps (frames per second).
3. SIF (Standard/Source Input Format): 320 x 240 pixels (NTSC) or 384 X 288 pixels (PAL).
4. CIF (Common Interface/Image Format): 352 x 288 pixels, defined to run at 29.97 fps.
5. 4CIF (four times CIF): 704 x 576 pixels, defined to run at 29.97 fps.
6. VGA (Video Graphic Adapter): 640 x 480 pixels.

Quite often, the fps value specified with the CIF-derived formats is neglected, and only the respective resolutions are meant when referring to CIF, QCIF or 4CIF.

Note that sometimes even very common video formats are not supported by a device. For instance, the Pinnacle Dazzle DVC 100 USB video capture device, sold as part of Dazzle DVD Recorder, does not support the 176 x 144 pixels format that The vOICe prefers by default, and one needs to manually set another format such as 320 x 240, while for some reason the 352 x 288 setting only gave a garbled view in testing.

Yes, by selecting this driver from The vOICe Drivers menu after installing the CU-Doodle software ( cudoodle.zip). However, when switching back to using a camera after using CU-Doodle, you may have to manually put proper settings again in the Edit | Audio/Video Preferences | Video Format and Video Source menus. In particular the image resolution and color mode may have been modified by using CU-Doodle. Also, CU-Doodle seems to work well only in 16-bit or 24-bit color mode (giving distorted graphics in 8-bit or 32-bit color modes) and it does not seem to function under Windows NT and later. As a more up to date alternative for CU-Doodle, consider  SoftCam from Luminositi. SoftCam appears to work well as a simulated software-only camera for The vOICe.

Yes, you can disable the splash screen in the Window preferences dialog as activated from the Edit menu. The splash screen does not add to the startup time, though, so you will not get a faster program startup by disabling it.

You decide. It depends on your definition and expectations of a mind machine. It certainly qualifies as a brain-machine interface (BMI) or human-machine interface.

Yes, to some extent. The Stereotoner (Visitoner) was conceived as a reading machine, while The vOICe is more like a "seeing machine" for dealing with and experiencing your visual environment. However, with the following changes in parameter settings, The vOICe runs as a crude simulation/emulation of the obsolete 10-tone Stereotoner:

1. Via the menu Edit | Soundscape Preferences, set the number of soundscape rows M to just 10 (the default is 64).

2. Toggle the "Manual Scan" mode via the menu Options | Video Rate | Manual Scan (or via the keyboard shortcut Alt O R M). This will disable the automatic left-to-right scanning.

3. Adapt lens focus as needed for for close-up reading.

4. You may need to toggle inverse video via function key F5, because most printed text has dark characters on a bright background (black ink on white paper).

Note that the camera frame rate cannot be set very high, and this limits this Stereotoner simulation/emulation. Also, with typical PC cameras you cannot move the camera very close to print without getting beyond the available lens focus range. This means that it may only work with headline text, unless you somehow add special optics to the camera.

Instead of a camera, you can also work with on-screen print by using the mouse area sonification mode under function key F9, and applying zoom modes F4 and variants as needed. Physical movement of the mouse now replaces physical movement of the camera.

Just press Shift F1 when done, to return to the normal default settings of The vOICe for viewing your visual environment.

The vOICe has not been designed or tested for that purpose, but conceptually the image scan could track the sweeping movements of a long cane. In order to do so, one would mount a camera on the cane, and toggle the "Manual Scan" mode via the menu Options | Video Rate | Manual Scan (or via the keyboard shortcut Alt O R M). This will disable the automatic left-to-right scanning and by default sound a single vertical slice at the center of the camera view. The image content and corresponding sound of this slice will then automatically follow any left-to-right and right-to-left sweeping movements of the cane.

Your ears do! The hair cells (auditory receptors) in your ears respond within microseconds to displacements down a tenth of a nanometer. The vOICe defines and guides these minute displacements. Other than that, your PC and camera may include nanotechnology.

No, The vOICe for Windows software currently has no expiration date. You can use it for as long as you wish.

No. Usage of The vOICe technology in the US does not fall under the jurisdiction of the FDA (Munzner, 1999), because it is intended for educational uses, to stimulate academic and clinical research, to learn about vision and to enable training for visual skills and experiences (e.g., sensory integration training). It is not meant as a therapy, and it is not intended to treat, cure, or prevent any disease or condition (including blindness), and hence it does not constitute what the FDA calls a "medical device" even under their extremely broad definition, reading

``an instrument, apparatus, implement, machine, contrivance, implant, in vitro reagent, or other similar or related article, including a component part, or accessory which is:

• recognized in the official National Formulary, or the United States Pharmacopoeia, or any supplement to them,
• intended for use in the diagnosis of disease or other conditions, or in the cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease, in man or other animals, or
• intended to affect the structure or any function of the body of man or other animals, and which does not achieve any of it's primary intended purposes through chemical action within or on the body of man or other animals and which is not dependent upon being metabolized for the achievement of any of its primary intended purposes.''

The vOICe, if used solely as an educational aid, would not be considered a medical device. The same applies to auditory integration training, or AIT, for which various products are being marketed and sold in the US without (a need for) FDA approval. The vOICe sounds the content of visual scenes, which is analogous to screen readers reading the content of visual screens to blind users. Screen reader programs are not considered medical devices. Use of The vOICe may lead to recruitment of visual cortex, but so does reading Braille, which is also not considered a medical treatment. Unlike some other "non-invasive" sensory substitution systems, The vOICe does not involve use of electrodes in direct contact with the human body. Even if The vOICe software, running on standard mass-market hardware, would fail to perform in accordance with specifications, the risk to the user is very low: as stated elsewhere, The vOICe does not replace long cane and/or guide dog, and blind users should never rely on The vOICe for their safety.

Any clinical trials with The vOICe for purposes other than the non-medical purposes outlined above are only authorized through qualified medical partners and performed in accordance with  FDA regulations or its non-US equivalents.

As with any audio-based system, permanent hearing loss may result when sounds are played at high volume for prolonged periods of time. The US Occupational Safety & Health Administration ( OSHA) states that noise levels for 8 hour a day exposure must remain below 85 dB, and 80 dB for 24 hours a day. This therefore seems to be an appropriate guideline also for daily use of The vOICe.

Delete its executable "voice.exe" and any of its shortcuts (e.g., on the desktop and/or in Start | Programs, and for the "Send To" context menu in the folder C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\SendTo). If you do not remember where you had stored the executable, just run The vOICe and read the location of the executable via the menu Help | Locate executable. To get rid of entries made by The vOICe for Windows in the registry, download and double-click the registry settings file uninstall.reg.