The World Literacy Foundation and a Dutch marketing company Media.Monks have teamed up to create a pen to help millions of people around the world fight illiteracy.
The device, called the Literacy Pen, is compatible with any standard pen or pencil. Users place the device on the pen and then speak the desired words into the built-in microphone.
vThe office dictation technology then transcribes these words letter by letter onto a digital screen built into the device. The user can then transfer the words they see onto paper using a single pen.
“The device ensures an effective learning experience by focusing on key aspects of literacy development, such as written and visual repetition,” its makers say.
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Its small size makes it accessible to users of all ages and abilities.
While Text-to-speech pens, which use optical character recognition (OCR) technology to read printed text aloud, are common, but speech-to-text pens are not.
According to the Finnish Reading Center, an NGO The literacy program is one in seven illiterate adults worldwide. This can be due to a number of factors, such as poor access to education, poverty and language impairment.
The implications are profound. Illiteracy makes it much more difficult for individuals to find employment. In many cases it perpetuates the vicious cycle of poverty.
If the literacy pen can be rolled out en masse to the places where it is needed most, I can only imagine the impact it will have on people's lives.
We have reached out to the creators and will update this story if we receive a response.
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