Frequently Asked Questions

The EDW® platform leads the industry in handwriting interpretation accuracy. Our proprietary techniques combine and improve upon the results from best-of-breed commercially available interpretation engines. Additionally, a growing set of custom datatypes guides and optimizes the interpretation. By combining the best commercial engines with our proprietary techniques, the EDW® platform achieves a more accurate handwriting interpretation than other industry products.

Yes. The handwriting interpretation technology can interpret cursive writing and printed writing. Our advanced proprietary techniques also interpret graphical images, converting marks on a graphic image to numerical values. For instance, a person might be asked to make a mark on a scale to indicate their agreement with a specific statement. The EDW® platform converts the mark made by the user into a numerical value that can be sent to a back-end system for statistical reporting and analysis.

Yes. The handwriting interpretation technology can recognize a crossout and successfully interpret the rewritten writing.

The EDW® platform is currently capable of interpreting forms written in English, French, Spanish, Dutch and Portuguese, and is extensible to other languages. Additionally, the end user components are localized for specific geographic regions to ensure highly accurate handwriting interpretation. For example; the English language system is localized for the United States and the Portuguese system is localized for Portugal.

Yes, there can be a list of words which are provided as candidates for the handwriting interpretation of specified form fields. They can be imported into the database or can be added as a user verifies handwriting in our EDW® Form Viewer or EDW® Field Verifier. This works much like adding a word to the spell checker "dictionary" of word processing applications.

The EDW® platform employs common and customer-specific lexicons, to which new entries are automatically added during the verification of the interpretation. Common lexicons contain information of value to multiple customers such as city names and first and last names. Customer-specific lexicons contain information unique to the customer such as a product or parts list, office names, and employee identification numbers. Since lexicons can be updated during verification, the platform’s handwriting interpretation improves over time.