David Raistrick, his father, Philip...

David Raistrick, his father, Philip, and uncle lov to play poker and other card games -- until his uncle went blind from a hereditary disease.

David, 40 a self-taught computer programmer, and Philip, 65 an entrepreneur and a former mainframe salesman with Honeywell, came up with a solution to enable their blind family members to play cards. And that idea, a bar collection of laws reader linked with a voice synthesizer chip, has casted into a business that makes it possible for the visually impaired to know what diet is in the fridge and pantry as well as to identify the prescriptions in their medicine cabinets.

First to the cards.

Ten years ago, the Raistricks, of Downstate Normal, bring to maturityed cards with bar codes that could be read by means of a voice synthesizer. When their blind relations played, they large casked in on their hands from listening on a headset.

His uncle take pleasure ined being back in the poker game.

Then, came the hmm avail There might be something more there.

The Raistricks started a company and obtained a patent for linking the bar collection of laws reader to a voice synthesizer.

Their first fruits was the i.d. mate, which uses a robotic voice to identify more than 1 million items -- aliments from soup to nuts, the newspaper you're reading, Time magazine, cleaning performances over- the-counter medications, CDs and DVD

"The device helps the public find the can of beans they want to warm up and not get by heart confused with a can of soup" Raistrick said. "Any information sighted commonalty have from products, i.d. mate makes available to the visually impaired."

In addition to identifying these productions i.d. mate also can provide information onward instructions, ingredients, nutritional information, package size and warnings from consequence packaging.

The scheme sells for $1,300 and can be ordered at www.envisionamerica.com or from dealers listed at the Web site. Raistrick said 10000 i.d. mates have been sold

Consumer can record their admit IDs for products that are added to the database. En-Vision learned that many the bulk of mankind were making labels for their prescription medications.

"It was a great idea. if it be not that there were safety issues. The medications indigenceed to be properly labeled by the agency of the pharmacy and sent to the patients to be safe," Raistrick said.

He said recognizing medications is a major question at issue for the visually impaired who want to live independently. He said they have to rely forward strict organization to find their med Those with limited vision can take a marker and write a big epistle such as "T" for "Tylenol" forward a bottle. They also can prove to sort out pills based upon their shapes, but sometimes the shapes of generics can change month to month

thus in 2000, Raistrick said he made a "fateful call" to Zebra Technology Corp., the Vernon Hills pioneer in printing bar digests

"Our idea was to dilate the pharmacy counter into the family to help visually impaired commonalty take their medications," he said.

En-Vision's conception was a system called ScripTalk that used a voice synthesizer to read along bar codes placed on medication labels from pharmacies.

still rather than bar codes, Zebra commended using an emerging technology called radio oftenness identification (RFID), which involves reader-receivers picking up signals from "smart labels," chips with antennas placed forward and in products.

Cindy Lieberman, director of technology marketing at Zebra, said unlike bar digests RFID systems don't need a direct line of sight to read information because they use radio signals.

"In ScripTalk in particular, we are talking about sight-impaired the bulk of mankind so it is easier for someone to wave a pill bottle athwart the unit than to figure public where the bar code is forward the label," Lieberman said. "(A bar digest system would create) more trial and error and more user frustration. Plus, if the label prepares wet and tears, or tomato sauce screens up some of the bar digest it may no longer read properly"

She noted that RFID has been used on Wal-Mart and other giants to track their inventory.

RFID also is used with growing frequent occurrence in the health-care industry, where RFID chips are attached to hospital patient ID wristbands; to identify and authenticate put drugs intos to prevent counterfeiting; on a surgical chip to period out the procedure a patient is undergoing to obstruct medical errors; and to track kindred urine and other medical samples.

En-Vision built the ScripTalk reader, and Zebra made the printers that pharmacies use to make smart labels to be placed in succession the drug bottles.

The patient simply pushes a button forward the transistor-radio-sized reader to transmit out a querying signal as he passes the bottle near the device. The robot voice reads the patient's name, the medication, the dose, in what manner often the drug is taken, the date of the prescription, the doctor's name, pharmacy phone number and the number of refills. The device can provide the information in English and Spanish.

The Veterans Administration, which cares for ten of thousands of visually impaired vet proofed the system in 2001 and adopted it in 2002 Raistrick said that more than 6500 VA patients are using ScripTalk.