Often in my work with the AFB Information Center, I field inquiries from seniors and others who are new to vision loss who want to read mail and other documents or access information without the complexity of a computer or smartphone. The Blaze ET, and its less complex cousin the Blaze EZ, are DAISY book and media players that have the ability to access and download content from the Web and perform Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to convert printed text into speech. The Blaze ET can also connect to a HIMS braille display, though I was not able to test this feature. In this article, I will be exploring the various features of the Blaze ET. In particular, I'll evaluate its capability regarding online content, ease of use, and OCR.

Documentation

The Blaze ET has both a full user manual and a quick start guide. The Blaze ET user manual can be downloaded from the HIMS website in DOC format. The manual is also available on the Blaze ET itself in both DOC and TXT format. I was not able to find the quick start guide from HIMS, but the guide can be downloaded in DOC format from the A T Guys website. The quick start guide is also included in the Blaze ET's box in both print and Grade 2 braille.

I found that the quick start guide provided enough information to operate the great majority of the Blaze's features. Since the Blaze is quite intuitive to use, I used the manual primarily as a reference for obscure information, such as the location of various symbols on the symbol keyboard. The manual is comprehensive and describes in detail each function and nearly any possible action an individual can perform.

Device Description and Basics

The Blaze is 4 by 2 by 0.6 inches and weighs 4.1 ounces. The Power button is red and located at the top of the front face between the stereo speakers. Just below is a row of three rectangular buttons: Info, Home, and OCR. Below these are the four-way arrow keys with the round OK button in the center. Following these are the rectangular Cancel, Menu, and Review buttons—red, blue, and green respectively—followed by the telephone-style keypad. The left edge contains the Voice Control button followed by the Volume keys and the SD card slot below. The right edge contains the Record button and a keypad lock switch, while the back of the device houses the camera followed by the battery compartment.

Though it is complex for a digital book reader, the Blaze ET is quite intuitive to use. Most functions can be accomplished with the arrow keys and the Cancel, Menu, and Review keys. Lists, which are used for navigating files and folders and menus, use the Up and Down Arrows for navigation. The Right Arrow enters folders and opens programs while the OK button will begin playing the content of a folder or select a menu item. The Menu key opens a menu of options for the given program. The Review button will generally read the item that currently has focus.

The numeric keypad is used to perform various actions quickly when in programs. Often, these can also be activated from a menu and, if not, holding the asterisk (*) key for 2 seconds will start a key describer that will tell you the current function of a key when it is pressed. In addition to lists, the Blaze makes use of combo boxes. These can be navigated using the Left and Right Arrows. Often, these are found when searching for content online or when adjusting options.

To enter text on the Blaze ET, you must use T9 entry, which assigns different letters to each key on the numeric keypad. The # key will allow you to cycle between upper-case letters, lower-case letters, numbers, and symbols. If you are not familiar with this system, you rapidly press a numeric key to enter a letter. For example, the 2 key types the letters A, B, and C. To enter the letter C, you would quickly press the 2 key three times. The manual contains a list of keys and the letters and or symbols they type.

Transferring Files to the Blaze ET and File Manager

There are several methods for accessing content from a computer or external drive on the Blaze. You can move files from your computer or other device to an SD card, then insert the card into the Blaze. With the included Micro USB to USB converter, you can connect USB flash drives to the Blaze. The Blaze will alert you when inserting or removing SD cards or USB drives.

You can also connect the Blaze directly to your computer and add files to either the internal storage of the Blaze or to an SD card if one is inserted. When you open the Blaze on your computer, you will see a folder called Internal Storage as well as a folder called SD Card if one is inserted. You can then move files into, or out of, these folders.

The file manager allows you to view and manipulate almost all files and folders on the Blaze. For a book reader, it is surprisingly full featured and allows many actions. Some of the functions of the file manager include copy/cut/paste, folder creation, the renaming of files and folders, the ability to unzip .zip files, and the ability to create a .zip archive of files.

It is possible to copy, cut, or delete a single file in focus or select several and perform these actions. Files can be selected manually, or pressing the 0 (zero) key for 2 seconds will cycle between different selection modes. Selected files can also be compressed into a .zip archive. When unzipping a .zip archive, you can choose to unzip the files in the directory containing the .zip file or to create a subdirectory for the files. The manual incorrectly identifies the Extract Here option as the option that creates the subdirectory. If your actions will result in file conflicts such as when unzipping files in a directory that contains files of the same names, you will be able to choose which are overwritten and which should be left unchanged.

Media Player and Book Reader.

Both the media player and book reader operate in very similar ways. The media player is used to play various types of audio content or the audio portion of a video file. The media player can play the following types of content: MP3, M4a, WAV, OGG, ASF, FLAC, AVI, WMA, and WMV. The book reader can read formats including DAISY content, TXT, RTF, DOC, DOCX, HTM/HTML/XML, HBL/HBF (document files used on HIMS Sense notetakers), EPUB, and PDF (PDF documents containing only images are not supported). The first time you enter the media player or book reader, you will be placed in the explorer. The explorer for any given program that plays content will only display the files that can be played.

Once you select a file, the media player will continue playback from the start of the last file played, while the book reader will remember your position in the last document or book. In the media settings, there is an option that will allow you to choose to have your position saved when exiting the media player if the file is longer than a certain time. In the book reader, I discovered that if you exit DAISY content using the Home or OCR buttons instead of the Cancel button, your position in the book is not saved. In addition, in some cases the book reader would save my position in Bookshare books slightly ahead of my last read position. If you want to play another file or folder, you can access the explorer from the menu during playback.

During playback of audio or document files, you can move through the current file or to other files using the arrows. You can select what navigation unit you would like with the Up and Down Arrow keys and move by that unit with the Left and Right Arrows. Note that if a certain navigation unit is not available for the current file, it will not appear. For example, the options to move from one file to another will not appear if you are playing a single file instead of an entire folder.

With the # key you can access the bookmarks menu and insert various types of bookmarks into files, access already placed bookmarks, and delete your placed bookmarks. You can insert a standard bookmark, a voice mark that will play a brief recording that you create at the point of the bookmark, and create highlight bookmarks to mark sections of a file.

In the book reader, navigation elements above the sentence level may not always be accurate. For example, the page unit may move by entire chapters and in some Bookshare books, heading levels moved by all heading levels instead of the specific level selected. The accuracy of these levels depended heavily on the quality of the markup in the book or document.

Radio, Web Radio, and Podcasts

The Blaze contains an FM radio and allows access to online radio streams through the Web radio program. It is also possible to download podcasts with the podcast program. The FM radio requires that you connect a set of headphones as they are used as the radio's antenna. If you would prefer to listen through the Blaze's speakers, you can choose to do so from the menu. You can move frequency by frequency with the Left and Right Arrows. You can hold either of these to jump to the next or previous channel that the Blaze recognizes. The Up and Down arrows will move you by your presets. You can set these from the menu or by holding numbers 1 through 6. Pressing a preset number (1-6) will take you to that channel.

It is possible to record radio stations when they are being played. Hold the Record button to start recording. You will hear a chime when recording begins. Note that you cannot change channels during recording. When you are finished recording, press the OK button and the recording is stopped and saved to the folder on the Blaze titled Radio. Recordings of radio stations sound identical to the radio broadcast without any loss of quality.

The Web radio allows you to listen to Internet radio stations and streams. there are several preloaded on the device. You can both navigate the channels as a list or cycle between them during playback. If you would like to find other stations, you can both download a database of available channels and search it from the menu. You can search by word or by category. When searching by category you can also select the country and language. In addition, you can add radio stations and streams by downloading M3U or PLS playlist files and adding them to the Web Radio folder in the Blaze's internal storage.

The podcast program will allow you to download and listen to podcasts. Some feeds are included on the device, but it is possible to search for others from a database or add them manually in the Podcasts folder in the Blaze's internal storage. Each time you open the podcast program you are placed in either the list of podcast feeds, or, if you had previously been listening to an episode, in the feed of the last podcast you were listening to. You can navigate the list of feeds with the Up and Down arrows and update and review episodes in any given feed with the Right arrow. You are informed of the status of episodes so you can determine their download and play status. Activating an undownloaded podcast will download it and begin playback when the download completes. Your position in the podcast file is saved. It is also possible to listen to podcast files with the media player; podcast files are stored in subfolders of the podcasts folder with the title of the feed. If you set the media player to retain your position in files over a certain length, I found this an easier method for listening to podcasts as I did not have to scroll through undownloaded or played files to find the particular episode I wanted to play.

OCR and Library Services

The key feature of the Blaze is its OCR capabilities. When you press the OCR button you are taken to the OCR program and placed in the list of options. Your focus is placed on the option to take a picture so you can quickly take an image to be processed by the OCR with either the OK or OCR buttons. When taking an image, there are options that can be activated to provide a guide for situating the camera. When this option is activated, the Blaze will provide directions such as Down and Left or Up. When text is focused you can choose to hear a beep, speech, or both. Both your captured images and the results of the OCR process are saved so that you can access or recognize them again. You can also import JPG image files or PDF files containing only images and have them recognized, but they must be placed in the Import folder in the OCR directory for the Blaze to find them.

I tested the OCR function on various types of text and compared the results to the KNFB Reader app on iOS. When scanning standard black print on white paper it recognized the document almost perfectly. It did identify a barcode as a series of ls but otherwise did not seem to make any mistakes. KNFB did not recognize the barcode but did jumble some of the text in its vicinity. When testing on glossy paper with images the Blaze was less accurate but was still able to recognize the majority of the text.

Compared to the KNFB reader app, the Blaze struggled significantly when attempting to read instructions on the back of a box. In this case, KNFB reader was able to recognize the instructions while the Blaze was not. Finally, I attempted to scan pages of a paper book that contained very small print. Both the Blaze and KNFB Reader made several mistakes but interpreted enough of the page so that I could follow what was occurring in the book.

The library services program allows you to download DAISY content from the NLS BARD program as well as Bookshare.org. For those in countries outside of the US, there is an option called Online DAISY, which contains other libraries. The process to search for and download NLS and Bookshare books is almost identical. You must first log in to the given service with your user credentials. Once you are logged in, you can either search the collection using search terms or navigate available categories such as Latest or Popular. Activating a search result will allow you to view the book's information or download it. You can also choose the download location when browsing search results.

Utilities

The Blaze contains several programs unrelated to multimedia content in the Utilities menu. The record option allows you to make audio recordings. Hold the Record button to begin recording and press OK to stop. A short press of the Record button will place you in either the recordings or radio recordings folder and begin playback. Oddly, pressing the OK button does not pause if you listen to files using the record program. The record program also allows you to record audio DAISY files. You are able to record a title for the DAISY book and then insert headings, pages, and phrases during recording. Note that you will not be alerted that you are recording the title or when inserting markup in the DAISY book unless you have adjusted your recording alert setting to Message.

The color reader allows you to use the Blaze's camera to learn the color of objects as well as their exact red, green, and blue hexadecimal values. I was able to acquire one correct result in both hue and shade but other attempts were always incorrect in at least one area. The memo program allows you to use T9 entry to create text memos. You can review memos from a list or search for specific memos either by their titles, their content, or both.

The Blaze also contains a calculator. To enter symbols such as + or − you can hold keys on the numeric keypad or select them from the menu. When finished typing your calculation, you can press the OK button to hear the result. The Blaze also contains an alarm. In addition to the time, you can set on what days you would like the alarm to sound, the number of times it sounds and if you want it to repeat after a set duration similar to a snooze function. The utilities menu also includes a dialog for setting a sleep timer, an option for formatting either a connected drive or the internal storage, and the ability to upgrade the device.

The Bottom Line

Though the Blaze contains some bugs, most are easy to work around or are minor, and those that are not occurred infrequently in my testing. For its complexity, the Blaze was easy to understand and use. It was possible to accomplish most tasks with the basic controls located on the top half of the device, which made it easy to begin using the Blaze.

The Blaze faces strong competition from smartphones and tablets, particularly iOS devices. In the areas where their features overlap, the Blaze has a few minor advantages such as the FM radio and DAISY recording capabilities, but most features can be matched by an iPod touch or iPad with a few low or no cost apps. That being said, for individuals who do not wish to learn or use touch-screen devices and have the budget, the Blaze ET and the Blaze EZ would be worth consideration. The Blaze devices also can serve as a simple, standalone OCR solution. Overall, the Blaze can't outmatch a smartphone or tablet in a feature-to-cost comparison but might be the exact solution for you depending on your specific needs and budget.

Product Information

Product: Blaze ET
Available from: HIMS Inc.
Price: $795

Manufacturer Comments

THE HIMS team would like to thank AccessWorld for taking the time to review the HIMS Blaze ET. We always appreciate feedback, and we use it to continuously improve our braille and low vision products through free firmware updates which are eligible to everyone free of charge.? Both Blaze models will continue to improve through feature enhancements and implementation of customer submitted ideas and feedback.? Remember to check out the resource center link on our webpage, www.hims-inc.com for the latest and greatest information on firmware releases, how-to videos, and much more about all of our blindness and low vision solutions.

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Author
Aaron Preece
Article Topic
Product Reviews and Guides