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Blind Computing?
moro asks: "One of my friends was recently blinded in an accident. The problem has arisen that he needs the use of his computer, but all of the interfaces for the blind are either EXTREMELY cumbersome, or OUTRAGEOUSLY expensive, if not both. Does anyone know of a good computing solution for the blind? Are there any open-source projects that specialize in this kind of stuff?" If there are blind programmers and sysadmins, then I'd hope the technology that enables them to do their jobs wouldn't be too cost-prohibitive to be brought into the home as well. So, are there any leads on affordable technology that will bring computing to the blind?
You could use emacspeak, or for a more modern solution try something like a custom hook together of festival for voice synthesis(use a better voice though, not the default one) and sphinx2 for voice recognition. Here's the URL's:
Festival - http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/festival/
Sphinx2 - http://www.speech.cs.cmu.edu/sphinx/
There's a guy at Humbug who is blind and uses a linux box. Just put these two pieces of software together in some sort of shell, use lynx for web browsing, and hook together other apps. For hardware just use a multi-symultanious and full-duplex sound card, with a headset earphone and mike. Hope this helps.
David
Well, there is a few speech synthesis programs that are quite nice, festival (good) or IBM:s ViaVoice (excellent) for example.
However, only a few application supports speech-devices. But since its possible to use many application in plain textmode from a VT102-terminal (pine for e-mail, editors, links for surfing etc) wouldnt it be great if somone developed a braille display that you hook on to a serialport and replaces the screen.
(Textmode rules! I do 70% of my computing on the VT102 terminal in my livingroom).
I believe that there are some support for speech devices in the kernel aswell, unless im wrong.
Furthermore i'd like to direct you to BLINUX
(I use viavoice to read me a bedtime story every now and then, but found out that a Mommy is better at that - afaik she never kept on reading after i fell asleep)
if you want to be a programmer or sysadmin and blind - there's just too many symbols and odd expressions to be read to you in a voice sounding like Stephen Hawking's except much less pleasant to the ears and out of tone.
-Evan
From the README:
It's apparently included in Slackware 8 (Which is where I got this.)
This hasn't been suggested, and will probably be flamed, but have you looked into Windows XP? I know, I know, it's the old evil empire that you'll be contributing to. But put that behind you. Windows XP is actually has great accessibility features for the blind and deaf.
Windows XP comes with a Narrator application, which will read the window contents of any application to you. Your application needn't support it, it will do it for you. It will guide you through navigating windows and applications. Also, if you install Office XP, you also get a Speech Recognition engine which will work with Office XP and other applications which support it, such as Internet Explorer 6 (and possibly 5.5). Seriously, if you're looking for maximum usability, drop the bias and just go with the best suited solution.
I haven't used many linux distors, but Suse looks for a braile display when you try to install it so it would be a good try if you fried is looking to intsall linux on his own.
Rerads
James
There may be a perfectly simple solution for this: allow him to see again.
Depending on the type of damage he sustained from the accident, he might be able to see the output from a retinal scanning display perfectly clearly. No focusing is necessary, as it paints the image directly on the retina. If his retinas are not damaged, it will work perfectly. If his retinas have _some_ damage but not total, it will still work to a degree. Beta units are around $8,000 -- well worth it.
If this is not an option, emacspeak is the road down which he should travel. Emacspeak was written entirely from scratch by a totally blind man, T.V. Raman. It works. Get it and set it up for him.
-nukebuddy
I've never actually tried it, but SuSE is apparently tailored for blind access.
Upon initial bootup of the installer, and even the rescue system, it probes for a braille display. It supposedly allows a complete Linux install for a blind user without any sighted help at all.
People are invariably impressed when the "probing for a braille display" message comes up.
I suggest calling them up and talking to somebody in person. Those guys are really responsive to that sort of thing.
Second, I've been wondering... since so much now depends on window managers and the windows-icon-mouse-pointer paradigm, why not create a simple reader that will give the blind full access to computers:
Set a screen to very low resolution (320x240?) and black and white, and set the font to be a Braille font. The reader would then plug into the video output port, and each element would move up or down with whether the output is on or off.
Instead of using a mouse, the user would push down hard (harder than reading) at the point that he wants to click.
Expensive? At first, yes. We'd need to have a very, VERY cheap way to move up and down (individually) some 76800 individual dots, as well as be able to read the postiiton at those points. But worthwhile? I think so.
Never play leapfrog with a unicorn. Or a juggernaut.
QED