ABBYY, a leading provider of document recognition, data capture and linguistic technologies, has announced its release of TextGrabber + Translator 4.0, an iOS application which uses your device camera to easily extract text from a variety of printed sources, such as books, magazines, ads, timetables, manuals, labels, receipts, et al.

Powered by ABBYY’s own award-winning Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology for mobile platforms, it provides highly accurate on-device text recognition and allows users to easily edit, translate, search and share information while on the go.

Applications for TextGrabber include

1. Business/productivity. TextGrabber helps you get the job done more quickly. Take a picture of the text you need from any source, hit read, and you can text/email it to colleagues or store it in Evernote. See example at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHD5UtaZ6Mg.
2. Education. Use TextGrabber to collaborate on school projects. Take a picture of text from textbooks and reports, crop the photo to the text you want and save. You can send it to classmates and store for your future reference. See video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRk4QldWW3E
3. Travel. TextGrabber can be your guide! Just take a picture of the text you want translated – from a sign, inside a magazine or newspaper, etc. – and TextGrabber can translate it for you.

Accessibility for people with low vision and sight loss (e.g., seniors). Each interface element is distinctly named aloud and supplied with a brief audio comment, thanks to the iOS VoiceOver feature. It also offers text-to-speech conversion and provides the voice for text recognition and translation results.

New features include:

1. Completely new interface
2. Full support for Apple iPad and iPad Mini
3. The application is compatible with the iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad and iPad Mini. iOS 6.0 or higher is required.
4. Android: TextGrabber is compatible with devices running Android 2.2 or higher.

http://www.abbyy.com.au/