ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Optical character recognition

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is a way to take a picture of words and convert them into digital text. It uses special software to scan an image or document and recognize the letters and words in it. Once it is done, this text can be edited, moved around, or used in other ways. It is like a special computer reading glasses that can be used to read words from an image.