“Can your software read my dad’s diary?” If we only had a penny for each time we were asked that question…

Unlike OCR, which is able to recognize entire pages of machine printed text in several different languages with really high accuracy rates, ICR can’t do the same with handwriting, and we don’t foresee this anytime in the near future.

Dad’s diary aside, when it comes to business documents and applications, you might be surprised what it can actually do. The latest ICR technology available can easily read constrained handprint like this:

And unconstrained handprint like this:

Additionally it can read cursive handwriting:

And now it can even automatically locate and recognize unstructured handwriting anywhere on a document. For example, it can locate and extract handwritten comments on margins, or notes on invoices, or tips on receipts. As long as there is a vocabulary with the keywords and data types you are looking for, the software can find it.

This really cool capability aids in classification of documents, enables routing to specific workflows, or can just simply output the results and coordinates for other types of processing.

ICR and automated handwriting recognition have come a long way. While it still can’t read your mom’s recipe book, there’s still a multitude of processes that can be enabled by the latest technology: