Hephaestus Project Home PageAs 2000 began, Dr. Feigenblatt described how the evolution of the Internet would make access to product information much easier for everyone, including the blind, in this post to the e-mail list of the Alabama chapter of the National Federation of the Blind.
We are gratified to report the scenario proposed in the post is coming much closer to realization. Basically, the idea is to use a hand-scanner attached to a PC to read a barcode printed on the object of interest, to direct one's World-Wide-Web browser to a page associated with the object. Such a page can then be read aloud with free text-to-speech tools or silently with a refreshable Braille display. For the sake of the blind, it will be useful to provide tactile location/direction markers adjacent to such barcodes.
Barcodes have a long history. (Perhaps GemStar's VCR-plus system, introduced in 1990, which used printed television programming schedules to configure a VCR to record TV, eventually exploited barcode scanning technology in some implementations.) By May 2000, paper-based publishers started printing barcodes to expedite access of associated Web pages, as related in this story.
One company playing a major role in encouraging this methodology is Digital Convergence, whose CueCat(TM) scanner is being given away for free through multiple channels. For example, you can visit one of the USA's 7000+ Radio Shack stores and pick one up. All the store will ask of you is your name and address. Various sources suggest up to 1 million, 3 million or even 10 million CueCats may be distributed! One has to admire such a bold initiative, even if the business model envisioned may not work quite as well as hoped.
The CueCat barcode scanner is a so-called "keyboard wedge" which plugs in between your PC keyboard and keyboard socket. It uses a 6-pin mini-DIN plug/socket pair. If your keyboard plug/socket pair is 5-pin DIN style, you will need a pair of connector-adapters to make use of it, which might cost a total of US$10.
The CueCat comes bundled with software on a CD-ROM that works under Microsoft Windows 95, 98, NT 4 or 2000, but currently (25 September 2000) Radio Shack customers are not contracted to use it as a condition for receiving the hardware. While this software provides everything the user needs to employ barcodes to bring up associated Web sites, some critics have offered reasons using it might be undesirable.
This article describes how using the bundled software potentiates extensive tracking of users, and also makes note of "a security breach at DigitalConvergence's Web site [that] exposed about 140,000 consumers' names, email addresses and ZIP codes". Others want to use the hardware under alternative computer operating systems, or for additional purposes, and such motives have spawned projects to create third-party software, such as listed under the umbrella Web site found here. Digital Convergence has tried to stay such efforts, but apparently they lack the grounds for doing so, as related in a story here.
Readers who desire to use the CueCat to find Web sites associated with products bearing a barcode can exploit such third-party software. One effort resides here. It has the merit of using the Perl computer language, which runs under very many computer operating systems indeed.
To install this software, you must perform three steps:
1. Install Perl on your computer. A company like Active State provides free downloads for several platforms here or here. (e.g. We have installed Perl on Windows 98 by running this program.)
2. Download the third-party CueCat support software by extracting the file cuecatd.pl from this zip file.
3. Copy the actual Perl application program, UPCweb.pl, we make available here, into the same directory in which you have placed the file cuecatd.pl. (The handicapped, such as the blind, and their current domicile cohabitants, are granted a license to use this program under the terms specified within the file.)
Whenever you want to find Web-based information associated with a barcode, run UPCweb.pl. For example, under Microsoft Windows, installing Perl will cause files of type *.pl to be implicitly associated with the Perl interpreter. This means that (double-)clicking on UPCweb.pl within Windows (file) Explorer will automatically cause it to execute. A "DOS console window" will open and produce a short beep/click. At this point you, swipe the barcode with your CueCat. A successful scan will result in another short beep/click, the window will close, and your Web browser will navigate to a page describing information available for the item in question.
Details will vary. You may only be presented with the manufacturer's name. But perhaps one or more of its Web sites will be listed as well. And if you are fortunate, you will enjoy a hyperlink for the particular product whose barcode you have scanned! In principle, this hyperlink could even lead you to a machine-readable manual for the product in question.
Note the UPCweb.pl program exploits an Internet barcode database which competes with the one used by the Digital Convergence software. Over time, one or the other may afford more extensive coverage.
Hephaestus Project Home Page