PEABODY, Mass., September 12, 2002 - ScanSoft, Inc. (Nasdaq: SSFT), the leading supplier of imaging, speech and language solutions, today announced that the company has been awarded a five-year Federal Supply Schedule Contract (GS-35F-0295M) by the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA). As a GSA schedule contractor, ScanSoft® will make available to all Federal agencies its award-winning productivity solutions, including the recently launched OmniPage® Pro 12 Office, a comprehensive solution to convert, edit, process and share paper and PDF documents.

OmniPage Pro 12 Office is a powerful productivity application that delivers highly accurate document and PDF conversion capabilities to office workers, replacing manual re-design and indexing tasks with an automated electronic process. The product helps organizations save time and money by instantly turning paper and PDF files - letters, contracts, spreadsheets, magazine articles, manuals and more - into editable and searchable electronic documents. A number of Federal agencies have selected ScanSoft products for document and PDF conversion, including the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Defense, and Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The GSA contract award provides a direct purchasing mechanism for Federal agencies and ScanSoft's government channel partners, simplifying the process for acquiring ScanSoft solutions. All of ScanSoft's productivity applications, including OmniPage, Dragon NaturallySpeaking®, PaperPort®, OmniForm ® and AudioMining™ are represented on the GSA Schedule.

"ScanSoft's OCR, PDF, eForm, dictation, audio mining and paper management applications help organizations meet requirements mandated in the Government Paperwork Elimination Act (GPEA), Section 508 and the Electronic Signature in Global and National Commerce Act (E-Sign)," said Robert Weideman, chief marketing officer at ScanSoft. "OmniPage addresses these mandates with features that are powerful, yet easy to use. Its support for importing and exporting PDF, converting documents to XML, and archiving files using ODMA are among the reasons OmniPage is the document-conversion solution of choice for a growing list of Federal agencies."

GSA is a centralized Federal procurement and property management agency created by Congress to improve government efficiency and help Federal agencies better serve the public. It acquires, on behalf of Federal agencies, office space, equipment, telecommunications, information technology, supplies and services. GSA provides services and solutions for the office operations of more than one million Federal workers located in 8,300 government-owned and leased buildings in 1,600 U.S. communities.

In August, ScanSoft introduced OmniPage Pro 12 Office, delivering a single, affordable solution to convert, edit, process and share both paper and PDF documents. With this release, ScanSoft has increased overall accuracy and improved PDF conversion accuracy. This easily makes OmniPage Pro 12 Office the fastest and most reliable document conversion tool available. Other important capabilities include:

The Most Accurate Conversion in 114 Languages - ScanSoft's sophisticated multi-engine OCR voting capabilities now deliver unprecedented accuracy. The new release increases accuracy up to 35% over the previous version, resulting in better than 99% document conversion accuracy. OmniPage Pro 12 Office also converts documents in 114 languages, making it the only document conversion product a user will ever need.

Breakthrough PDF Conversion - OmniPage Pro 12 Office helps organizations re-purpose information trapped in PDF files by instantly converting them into editable word processing and spreadsheet documents. The new release includes PDF Overlay Matching technology, which delivers more than 80% improved accuracy for PDF normal and image/text conversion when compared to other solutions.

Automatic and Continuous Batch Processing - A powerful tool in meeting requirements in the Government Paperwork Elimination Act, OmniPage Pro 12 Office automatically and continuously converts volumes of paper documents and PDF files into editable and searchable documents over standard networks.

Section 508 Compliance - ScanSoft OmniPage is the only OCR and PDF conversion application that complies with US Government's Section 508 mandate for making software accessible to those with disabilities.

RealSpeak Proofing - OmniPage Pro 12 Office includes RealSpeak™ proofing, human-sounding synthesized speech that reads converted document text aloud - making it easier than ever to catch and correct potential errors. Text-to-Speech is an important capability within Section 508, which addresses accessibility requirements within Federal agencies.

Conversion to XML - XML is an important new standard within government agencies, and a powerful tool for implementing solutions to meet the Government Paperwork Elimination Act. OmniPage has native support for converting paper and PDF documents into standard XML data, including index information and page segmentation data. Batch processing to XML is also supported.

Enterprise Sharing and Connectivity - With its new support for the Open Document Management API (ODMA), XML and network archiving, OmniPage Pro 12 Office delivers unmatched document sharing capabilities and leverages industry standards for connectivity with enterprise content management and workflow applications.

Enterprise Deployment - The new release includes features that increase the return-on-investment and lower the cost of ownership for agencies of any size. These include support for network scanning, network install and volume licensing.

ScanSoft OmniPage Pro Office is available immediately through the GSA Schedule at www.GSAadvantage.gov as well as through ScanSoft's global network of reseller partners. For additional information on features, pricing and volume licensing programs, please visit www.ScanSoft.com or call 800.443.7077.

About ScanSoft, Inc.

ScanSoft, Inc. is the leading supplier of imaging, speech and language solutions that are used to automate a wide range of manual processes -- saving time, increasing worker productivity and improving customer service.

Trademark reference: ScanSoft, OmniPage, Dragon NaturallySpeaking, PaperPort, OmniForm, AudioMining and RealSpeak are registered trademarks or trademarks of ScanSoft, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other company names and product names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

The statements in this press release that relate to future plans, events or performance are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, including risks associated with market trends, competitive factors, and other risks identified in ScanSoft's SEC filings. Actual results, events and performance may differ materially. Readers are cautioned not to put undue reliance on these forward-looking statements that speak only as of the date hereof.

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