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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)
Jesus was the biggest, baddest, BLACKEST negro. Ever.
Praise be to the negro savior.
HOUSTON, TX? Tawanna "Grammy" Luster and elated family members celebrated Thursday her first successful bowel movement since the September 11th terrorist attacks. "I's regular again!, I's regular again!" exclaimed a rapturous Tawanna dancing on her front porch when asked about her improved condition. According to TOBJ sources the attack on America had a strange effect on Miss Lusters regularity. "Them terrorist done terrorized my bowels. And I has not gotten nary a wink of sleeps since those damn devils done blown up them buildings." After exhausting all available over-the-counter medications Tawanna turned to a higher power to solve her fecal dilemma, "Last night I just cried and cried. I sat at my toilet bowl alter praying to the Lord to cure my backside. I says "Please Lord, let my bowels be free and I swear I'll go to church EVERY Sunday." The next morning Tawanna was on the commode for three hours. "Lorrrd, it was a miracle and it felt so good I did not wanna get off that toilet! I called up my grandbaby to get me a two-piece and biscuit. I know it ain't good manners for a lady to eat her breakfast in the baffroom but I was hungry!" Tawanna now says that she appreciates the things she used to take for granted before September 11th, "Everytime I get on the toilet now I hums God Bless America. I feel that I is doing my small part to get America back to bizness as usual."
?Many people are surprised to discover
that Christ was a black man, but when one looks at Christ's lineage one
discovers that He has numerous Hamatic Ancestors, with Tamar, Rahab, Ruth,
Naomi, Bathsheba and Jezabel being the most notable.?
There is not one place in the New
Testament that describes the appearance of Jesus. The picture the world
recognizes as Jesus seems to be the same image from the Shroud of Turin,
however, the shroud does not show white or colored skin. Can we deduce from His
genealogy if there was indeed Hamatic Ancestors?
Actually a few colored people in the
genealogy does not give any indication of His skin color as many Caucasian people have at least one colored ancestor somewhere in
the recent family tree. However, there may be several reasons why the New Testament
doesn?t say a word about the physical appearance of Jesus. If Jesus were
depicted as Caucasian or Colored, would that indicate that one is better than the
other?
One must be very careful when jumping to assumptions about His
appearance, especially when we consider the only physical description given in
the Bible of Jesus:
Just as there were many who were
appalled at Him ? His appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any man and
His form marred beyond human likeness?.He had no beauty or majesty to attract
us to Him, nothing in His appearance that we should desire Him. He was despised
and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one
from whom men hide their faces He was despised, and we esteemed Him not.
Isaiah 52:14 - 53:1-3
Many Christians become very defensive
when their perception of Jesus as the perfect looking human being is shattered
by the above passage. The first comment I?ve received in talking about this to
other Christians is that this passage in Isaiah must refer to what Jesus looked like after being beaten
by the Roman soldiers before and during the crucifixion, not before. However,
one must look at Isaiah and read it carefully, no one was going to be attracted
to Him by His physical attributes.
Today, as in the time of the ministry of
Jesus, we come to faith not based on Jesus? physical characteristics as the
authors don?t provide us with any clues other than the great detail of His
attributes when He is in a transfigured state on the mountain and a similar
description in Revelation, but the authors are silent on His normal everyday
appearance.
In our world so many popular modern day
celebrities become adored and honored because of their physical characteristics.
We only need to go to the magazine stand and look at the covers to confirm this
human trait of cherishing beauty over accomplishments.
If you were to make up a religion, would
the Messiah not be the most beautifully attractive person to walk the Earth? The fact that
Isaiah indicates otherwise and the New Testament writers leave out any physical
description adds to the facts that the Bible is a genuine book based not on
human ideas and perceptions but on that of a Creator who does not force Himself
on people with all the powers available to Him through creating physical
attraction with the Messiah, but
does it the hardest way possible, through words and actions.
Was Jesus not perfect before His death? We read that
He was without sin,
but that doesn?t mean that He looked perfect. In
fact we read that the disciples didn?t recognize Him after He was resurrected
and could in fact change His form.
After that (appearing to Mary
Magdalene), He appeared in another form to two of them (disciples) as they
walked and went into the country. Mark
16:12
What kind of disfigurement would Jesus
have had? Job, a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil
(Job 1:8) has to suffer from Boils that covered his skin from top to bottom. We can only speculate on what qualities or lack of them
Jesus had
that would cause men to despise Him because of the way He appeared.
In reviewing the Isaiah passage and
coming to terms with them I find myself questioning my own feelings on all
people I meet. The saying is true ?Beauty is only skin deep?.
Would I have
shunned Jesus and ignored Him because of the way he looked? Have I shunned
others in my life because of the way they looked? Have others done this to me?
Can I change my attitude and
accept people for who they are and what they can become inside and not for how they
look on the outside?
Let?s learn from this and become more
accepting of all people.
If Jesus decided to approach you today as he appeared
back then how would you react?
Will Jesus treat you the way you treat
others?
?Judge
(Condemn) not, that you be not Judged. For with what judgment (condemnation) you
judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured
back to you.?
Matthew 7 1:2 (NKJV)
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