Scanning paper materials

• Kurzweil 3000

+ Excellent fidelity; very easy to use; speech, spellchecker, word prediction and study tools; network version

- Cost: £725 colour scan, £500 mono scan, £175 read only; saves files in Kurzweil format

• TextHelp Gold/Wordsmith

+ Scans into Word or Explorer; easy to use, speech, spellchecker, word prediction and study tools; network version

- Cost £320/£265; Poorer fidelity than Kurzweil

• Standard OCR (Textbridge, FineReader, OmniPage)

+ Low cost (£50-£100); scans into Word/Internet Explorer; network versions

- Poorer fidelity; requires other programs for speech etc