The Software R&D Center has proceeded with the development of functions to operate a copying machine with only aural guidance and ten-key pads responding to Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of the States (enforced in June, 2001) as a part of developing user-friendly (appliance-like ease of use) products. This uses speech processing technology, accessibility technology, and human interface technology, which Ricoh has cultivated for many years. Our R&D results have been publicized in academic symposiums, such as the Acoustical Society of Japan, The Institute of Electronics, Information & Communication Engineers, SIG on Welfare Information Technology.
The functions have been evaluated by the visually impaired with the cooperation of many people, including Tsukuba University of Technology and Yokohama City School for the Visually Impaired. After further research and development, the interface was introduced to the market as an optional unit of Ricoh multifunction digital color copier.
Want to computerize color paper documents in small files while maintaining quality? Digitizing color documents result in squished characters if we scan them at a high compression rate. Without a high compression rate, characters are clearly legible, but file size is unmanageable.
File size is reduced dramatically with Ricoh compact PDF, which separates images from characters of the scanned document and treats them in the most suitable way respectively. This method enables characters remain clearly legible.
Compact PDF is installed on Ricoh's multifunction digital color copier and on the Ridoc document management system. Color documents can be scanned with excellent quality.
The new JPEG2000 international standard for image compression is greatly changing image distribution in the network age. Significant features are that images maintain high quality while data size shrinks. Beyond that, images of different resolution can be distributed from an image file. We are conducting research and development while keeping image handling solutions firmly in mind and taking part in establishing international standards.
