TWAIN Working Group

The TWAIN Working Group is a not-for-profit organization which represents the imaging industry. TWAIN's purpose is to provide and foster a universal public standard which links applications and image acquisition devices. The ongoing mission of this organization is to continue to enhance the standard to accommodate future technologies. The TWAIN initiative was originally launched in 1992 by leading industry vendors who recognized a need for a standard software protocol and applications programming interface (API) that regulates communication between software applications and imaging devices (the source of the data). TWAIN defines that standard. TWAIN Direct, a new TWAIN initiative, is a command set used by applications to control scanners. Its goal is to replace the existing scanner APIs as the preferred method of image capture control, and is primarily focused on application vendors. Applications represent the needs of the end users, and improving the development experience for application developers through TWAIN Direct in this area offers great potential for the scanning market. TWAIN Direct addresses the need for something simple and direct that expedites application development and results in a feature-rich end user experience. TWAIN Direct eliminates the need for users to install vendor specific drivers as communication between scanning devices and image capture software applications. It supports direct network communication between mobile and desktop applications and scanning devices, including cloud platforms.