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?

Comments

Some Options

[redcliffe]

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

A few ideas

[Tersevs]

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)

Re:A few ideas

[Mandrake]

I would also suggest that you try out flite, which you can find at the CMU Flite page

Speakup?

[schon]

What about Speakup?

From the README:

What Is Speakup?

As mentioned previously, Speakup is a screen reader for the Linux
operating system. One of the things which makes Speakup different from
more traditional screen readers is that it is patched into the kernel. To
explain what this means, Speakup is an integral part of the operating
system. This means that when you turn on your computer and Linux starts,
Speakup also starts, meaning you can hear all boot-up messages, and
resolve any problems related to the computer not reaching the login
prompt. In addition, when you shutdown your system you will receive speech
feedback right until the message "Power down" is given, indicating you
should turn off your computer.

It's apparently included in Slackware 8 (Which is where I got this.)

Windows XP

[Bodero]

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.

Some helpful sites (mostly for Linux/Unix)

[acoopersmith]

Check out these URL's for more details:

• X for the disabled (scroll down a little bit)
  
• University of Wisconin Trace Center
  
• Sun's Accessibility Program (including GNOME)
  

SuSE

[jfunk]

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.

Re:SuSE

[Bryan Andersen]

ZipSpeak is the distribution I was thinking of.

Idea for a braille reader

[chipuni]

First, this link may help you with where to get information.

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.