Kurzweil 1000

Award-winning software that makes printed or electronic text readily available to people who are blind or visually impaired. It combines accessibility, communication and productivity tools to ease and enhance their reading, writing and learning experience.

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The software speaks text aloud in a variety of natural-sounding voices that can be modified to suit individual preferences. In addition, it provides users with document creation and editing as well as study skills capabilities for note taking, summarizing and outlining text.

Kurzweil 1000 delivers quick access to a wealth of information including online books, magazines and encyclopedias so users can pursue any reading interests. They can also take their reading wherever they go by sending files to Braille note takers and embossers as well as portable devices such as DAISY and MP3 audio players.

Kurzweil 1000 is easy to use for beginners, yet powerful and flexible for advanced users. With its wide array of useful features, users save time and gain independence - whether at home, at school, or at work.

Download the Kurzweil 1000 Product Sheet

Features
Version 13 Highlights
System Requirements
Testimonials

Study Tools

Professionals and students find Kurzweil 1000's comprehensive time-saving study tools extremely useful. Add bookmarks, text notes, and annotations; skim, summarize, and create outlines for your work, and have your documents open to the last position read. Plus, you'll have access to eighteen bilingual dictionaries.

Simple Forms Recognition and Completion

Our software provides easy access to most printed forms and presents them with the fields, labels, boxes, and text areas in the appropriate reading order. Fill in the fields, edit, save, and print-even insert your handwritten signature into the form, or any Kurzweil 1000 document, once it's scanned into your computer.

Choices for More Accurate Optical Character Recognition (OCR)

Two OCR engines, ScanSoft© OCR 16.2 and ABBYY FineReader 9, provide the most accurate available OCR. For the best possible scanning results, Kurzweil 1000 also has the ability to correct many errors. A noise filter option lets users ignore regions near the edge of a page that were incorrectly identified as text.

State-of-the-Art Speech Options

Clear, natural-sounding VoiceTextTM voices from Neo Speech and ETI-EloquenceTM voices from Nuance deliver the highest quality text-to-speech (TTS), making your reading a pleasure to hear. You can choose and adjust our many voice options to suit your individual preference.

Appointment Calendar with Audible Reminders

Keep track of your schedule with our easy-to-use calendar application. You can add, edit, and delete your calendar entries simply from the desktop taskbar, as well as set audible reminders that will play any sound file on your computer you choose.

Online Information Search and Retrieval

Enjoy quick access to information from a variety of sources, including e-books, magazines, encyclopedias, and the Merriam-Webster medical dictionary. Based on your criteria, Kurzweil 1000 will search select Internet repositories such as Bookshare.org, NLS Web Braille, AccessWorld, Talking Newspaper Association of the United Kingdom, NFB Publications, and Wikipedia (in multiple languages), and present you with your download choices.

Read Files Away From Home & Burn CDs

Kurzweil 1000 can send your files to a wide variety of hand-held devices so you can read and reference important material when away from your home or office computer. You can also create CDs of your files within Kurzweil 1000 if you have a CD burner.

Broad Range of File Access

Any file type that you can print through an application installed on your computer can be opened with Kurzweil 1000 (including PDF), which greatly expands your reading choices.

Kurzweil 1000 also available as a USB device

The power of Kurzweil 1000 is now mobile! You can now work on any computer - with no software installation required.

A New User Wizard

Topic-based mini tutorials to help new users get started quickly.

Dictionary Tools

The new Pronounce button speaks the word, while the Anagram button finds all anagrams associated with the word.

Three Image Viewing Modes

Show image for maximized display and continuous reading and paging functions, show both image and text for split screen, or hide image for text-only display.

Document sending

Kurzweil 1000 v12 now supports any device that emulates a disk drive on a PC, making it possible to send files to virtually any existing or expected device type.

PDF bookmarks

When opening a PDF file and converting to a KESI file, the conversion will automatically include bookmarks extracted from the original files.

Save Recognition

The Save Recognition Feature allows you to interrupt and save your work when recognizing a long image document, such as a PDF file. You can later open the document and continue recognition where you left off.

MP3 Encoder

The MP3 encoder is for the conversion of audio files. Kurzweil 1000 provides access to an encoder that may be downloaded via the internet.

Daisy Files

Kurzweil 1000 v12 will convert audio files from any WAV or MP3 file to Daisy 2.02.

Processor: 1 GHz Intel® Pentium 4 or faster.
Memory: 512 MB.
Hard Disk Space: At least 600 MB of available hard disk space; and an additional 625 MB if using VoiceText.
Sound Card: Sound Blaster®-compatible sound card with speakers.
CD-ROM drive, full-size keyboard and/or 17-button keypad.
A compatible TWAIN or WIA flatbed scanner (for scanner information contact Kurzweil Educational Systems, your local reseller, or go to our scanner compatibility page ).
MP3 File Playback on Other Devices: MP3 player capable of playing multiple sampling rates.
Operating System: Windows XP®, or Windows 7 (includes both 32-bit and 64-bit editions)

What Kurzweil 1000 Users are Saying...

"...the company listens." - Martin Roberts
I think Kurzweil 1000 has the best feature set in the industry for the totally blind user, and it's nice because the company listens. I own two other scanning products for the blind, and I always come back to Kurzweil after playing with the new releases of the others. It's the small details that make Kurzweil 1000 such a great product. The backup setting feature is fantastic for preserving settings when you need to re-install Kurzweil 1000 on a new computer, or for network administrators who need to repeatedly install the product on single machines. I use Kurzweil nearly every day, both for work and pleasure and I wouldn't be without it.

"I can't imagine life without it!" - Michael J. Hudson
Kurzweil 1000 brings a whole new level of information portability to blind users who need to take their reading on the road. You'll love the ability to produce your own MP3 books or even send reading materials to your PDA or notetaker. It's never been so easy to gain reading independence. This product combined with a computer and a scanner will dramatically change your life! I'm thoroughly delighted with this product. I can't imagine life without it! Reading printed materials, recognizing paper currency and even reading otherwise inaccessible PDF and image files - Kurzweil 1000 will amaze you.

"...it is a liberating experience..." - Mary Otten
"Having control of what one reads and when you read it is a liberating experience. The new version of Kurzweil 1000 makes it even easier to access information when you want it, as well as make reading materials portable with the new support for BookCourier. Kurzweil Educational has always been a leader in the area of information access for the blind, and this new version and the many new features, especially the new synthetic speech options, makes life and reading all the more enjoyable."

"...a great balance of really powerful features...." - John Riehl
"With this new version of Kurzweil 1000, I can easily scan, access and edit my own files and files sent to me by colleagues and friends. I can also easily search for, download and read books and magazines on the Web and listen to all my files with more natural-sounding speech. The new version of Kurzweil 1000 makes it even easier for me to transfer files to BookCourier and other portable reading devices. Kurzweil 1000 has always given me a great balance of really powerful features that I use every day at work and at home."

"...nothing short of the best reading package..." - Kenneth Gould
Using an OCR or reading machine program means more to me than just having some package that will translate printed text into verbal output. It means having that translation done with the highest possible accuracy and in the fastest time. It means having a user interface that is clear, flexible, and has the features that let me do my pleasure or work-related reading efficiently. And it also means having that OCR capability combined with the office tools such as email, photocopying, faxing, and e-book downloading that let me communicate my work with the outside world without ever having to leave Kurzweil 1000. When you couple those capabilities with a company such as Kurzweil Educational Systems which always listens to my suggestions to make the program better and which goes out of its way to help me with problems, you have nothing short of the best reading package from the people with whom I prefer to do business. I wouldn't use anything else.