A portable, talking barcode scanner from Matthews will make life easier for Australia’s vision impaired.

The scanner, known as ID Mate, can help the blind and low visioned at home, school or work — and even while doing the groceries.

ID Mate has been released by Visual Independence, a not-for-profit Australian charity set up to bring happiness through using assistive technology to those who are blind or live with low vision.

Visual Independence is managed through an all-voluntary advisory committee from Vision Australia, Guide Dogs Victoria, GS1 Australia and Matthews Intelligent Identification.

Visual Independence’s Bernie Slagtman says ID Mate is an exciting step forward that would allow the vision impaired to become more independent and empowered in their daily lives.

ID Mate uses Omni directional technology to scan an item’s barcode. Users then listen to spoken descriptions from the scanner’s database, which holds details of more than one million Australian bar code products.

via Talking barcode scanner from Matthews.

Tags: cosmetic, drink, food, healthcare, Innovation, packaging, Technology

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 19th, 2010 at 8:02 am and is filed under Drinks Packaging, Food Packaging, Healthcare & Pharma, Innovation, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.