A description of the Kurzweil reading machine and a status report on its testing and dissemination.

This paper presents a technical overview of the different subsystems of the Kurzweil Reading Machine--the nature of the information processed by each subsystem and the type of transformations performed. A description of how the user directs the machine is provided. The Veterans Administration's testing program, as well as those of the Bureau of Education for the Handicapped, the Rehabilitation Services Administration, and the National Federation of the Blind, are outlined. Preliminary tests of the machine with blind secondary school students have focused on the intelligibility of the synthetic speech output, and the results of these tests are presented.