KurzweilAI.net,
Mar. 7, 2004
WASHINGTON, DC -- The American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) presented its Migel 2004 Lay/Volunteer Award to Ray Kurzweil, inventor, entrepreneur, author, and futurist, at the annual Josephine L. Taylor Leadership Institute conference.
With the Migel Medal, AFB honors professionals and lay/volunteers whose dedication and achievements have significantly improved the lives of people who are blind or visually impaired. Irvin Schloss and Richard Welsh also received awards.
"Through the Migel Medal Awards, we recognize the important contributions and outstanding achievements that Ray Kurzweil, Irvin Schloss, and Richard Welsh have contributed to benefiting people who are blind or visually impaired," said President George W. Bush.
"Over the years, your dedication to developing life-changing technology has earned you countless accolades, all of which have been well deserved," said Senator Edward M. Kennedy in a statement addressed to Kurzweil. "Today's recognition further illustrates your extraordinary capacity to make indelible contributions to the common good, and I hope you take great pride in all that you have accomplished."
"We presented the award to Ray Kurzweil because of his extensive work in the field of blindness, optical character recognition, and the Reading Machine for the blind," said Dr. Susan Spungin, AFB Vice President, Education and International Programs. "He has made a great many contributions way before anyone else in this country and around the world."
Ray Kurzweil was the principal inventor of the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first omni-font optical character recognition, the first CCD flat-bed scanner, and the first text-to-speech synthesizer in 1975 and 1976.
The Kurzweil Reading Machine, developed by Ray Kurzweil with the National Federation of the Blind in the mid-1970s, scans books, magazine articles, and any other printed or typed documents and converts the pages into synthetic speech. It provided access to ordinary printed material to the blind for the first time. The Kurzweil 1000 reading system from Kurzweil Educational Systems, Inc. continues today as the market leader for print-to-speech reading software for the blind.
The American Foundation for the Blind, founded by Helen Keller, is a national nonprofit whose mission is to eliminate the inequities faced by the ten million Americans who are blind or visually impaired.
"Acceptance Remarks For American Foundation for the Blind Migel Award," Ray Kurzweil
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