9 Keywords: Htc Mobile Phone, CapturaTalk, Scanning, OCR, Reading Aloud, Smartphone, Dyslexia, Written Language Difficulty, Note Taking

"I found the scanning software really worked well once I got used to it. It is fairly simple to use and works on most magazines, books and even from the computer. You take a picture using the phone and the software will then read back to you what is displayed in the area you have highlighted with the stylus.

The text to speech software that comes with the scanning software is very useful and I used it when I wrote my dissertation. I found there were times when the Orange software got in the way but I have been told this is not a problem if the phone is supplied by Iansyst.

As for the HTC it has a good camera and everything loads very quickly. It has wifi access and wireless internet. However, there are a few potential problems for those who have dexterity difficulties - you have to use the stylus which is small and annoying - I broke it! Also the type font on the screen cannot be enlarged a great deal. The touch screen has an onscreen keyboard but I prefer a conventional number pad for texting. The phone is chunky but it does have a QWERTY keyboard which makes writing documents easier compared to a Blackberry which has a very small keyboard but I might get one as my next phone - watch this space! "

Some tips - when using mobile phones or small cameras for taking images that you want to use with built-in scanning software:

• Make sure the surface of the document is as flat as possible.
• Hold the camera steady and wait for the auto-focus to work.
• Use the highest possible megapixel camera for the character recognition to be at its best and the text to speech to make sense - 5 megapixels works well!
• Choose text that is relatively clear at the outset.
• Check the flash does not interfere.