Which function best describes Optical Character Recognition?

• A. Reads written documents when scanned and digitizes characters
• B. Translates spoken language into text
• C. Detects barcodes on products
• D. Extracts color information from images

Answer: (A)

Optical Character Recognition converts images of written text into machine-encoded text. When a document is scanned, OCR analyzes the shapes of the characters and translates them into editable, searchable text data that software can manipulate. This is what enables digitized copies of paper documents to be edited, searched, or stored digitally. In contrast, translating spoken language into text is about speech-to-text, detecting barcodes is barcode scanning, and extracting color information is image color analysis. The description that matches OCR is the one that involves reading written documents when scanned and digitizing the characters.