OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology is always great to have in one’s back pocket, because it allows you to easily scan and digitize documents with just your smart phone. In past articles we have looked at both PrizmoGo and Microsoft Lens, and we consider them to be among the best OCR apps available right now.

However, there is another well-established OCR app that we haven’t talked about before, and that’s going to be the subject of today’s e-bulletin.

ABBYY Fine Reader is an AI-powered scanner designed to scan and capture paper documents, books, agreements, receipts, magazine articles, notes, recipes, charts, tables, slides, whiteboards, and even billboards on the street.

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Lois works as an administrative assistant for a regional health authority. A large part of her job involves taking minutes for meetings and fielding many task requests. The meetings are held both in-person and virtually, and she found she was having trouble with her hearing loss in both contexts.

“My hearing has suffered and causes issues when taking minutes. Having to depend on reading a transcript, reading lips, [and] turning up the volume slows down production and to some extent [affects] accuracy,” she shares.

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Notetaking apps are helpful for a wide variety of individuals. Whether you are a student or a professional, there’s a good chance that at some point in your life you will need to take notes. And while I still prefer OneNote because of its Microsoft 365 integration, there are plenty of other notetaking apps worth considering.

Joplin is an open source note-taking app that can support a wide variety of multimedia types including images, videos, audio files, and more. Users can also create math expressions and diagrams directly in the app.

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Hazen works as a care aid in a long-term care facility. A young cancer survivor, she has hearing loss as a side effect of her treatment, which affects her confidence in communicating in the workplace.

Through WorkBC Assistive Technology Services, Hazen received funding for hearing aids for both ears.

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Today we are joined by Steven Vine, host of The Disabilities Diaries Podcast.

Nine years ago Steven had an aneurysm that completely changed the trajectory of his life. He has had an incredible health journey so far, and his story is absolutely inspiring. It was such a pleasure to talk with him and learn more about the strategies he uses to stay mentally healthy and connected to the world around him.

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Lola works in food service at a care home for seniors. She has hearing loss, and with over 100 residents to serve, it was becoming hard for her to hear food orders.

Her audiologist referred her to WorkBC Assistive Technology Services for help funding a new set of hearing aids. She applied and was quickly approved, allowing her to get the hearing aids she needs to do her job.

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Today we are going to look at an early learning math app intended for students from ages three to six. Magrid is a language-free math app designed to be used by students from a variety of linguistic and academic backgrounds. It’s also designed to be approachable for students with diverse learning styles.

The app features a variety of visual spatial activities including mental rotation, mental folding, working memory, eye-hand coordination, geometry and pattern, and visual perception. There are also a variety of numerical exercises available including extended learning, number comparison, ordinality, quantity recognition, number mapping, and number recognition.

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Fred works as a sales associate at a building supplies store in the BC Interior. He has hearing loss, which can make his job difficult.

“Adequate communication and understanding is imperative to my position,” he explains.

He had heard about WorkBC Assistive Technology Services from both co-workers, as well as from the local WorkBC Centre. He decided to apply for funding for the hearing aids he needs to do his job — in no time, he was approved.

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We recently created a video comparing some of our favorite AI research tools. Soon after releasing the video, one of my colleagues mentioned a new AI research tool that had recently been released, and I have to say, I am thoroughly impressed by this app! So, without further ado, let’s explore another incredible AI research tool!

Google Notebook LM is a brand-new AI research tool based off Google’s Gemini 2.0 chatbot. As of right now, only the browser-based version of the app is available to try, but the mobile version of the app is coming soon. In fact, users can currently pre-register for the mobile version of the app through the Google Play store.

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Cheryl works full-time as a booking clerk/secretary in the health care sector.

“I have conductive hearing loss. It was gradual, and then seemed suddenly I had severe hearing loss. I had great difficulty hearing information,” she shares.

Her hearing specialist referred her to WorkBC Assistive Technology Services for help funding the hearing aids she needs for work.

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