Apple to Add Free Screen Reader to Mac OS X

Joe Clark writes "Screen readers for blind Mac users have been nonexistent since 2003 when development was halted on the only one in existence. On Windows they cost up to $1,295. This week, Apple announced the upcoming Spoken Interface for Mac OS X, the long-rumoured Apple screen reader and more, we are told. Apple is looking for beta-testers for this technology preview. Already, a developer muses that IBMs accessible Java software could work with the screen reader. No mention of Braille-display support yet, which many blind and deaf-blind people need and want."

Comments

You know what this means, folks...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a call to all able programmers.
Grab a Jolt or a coffee and get cracking on an even freer Linux screen reader!

Re:You know what this means, folks...

[Lane.exe]

Forcing blind people to install, configure and maintain a Linux distribution is tantamount to a human rights violation.

And I say this as an avid Linux user.

Re:You know what this means, folks...

[Anonymous Coward]

Then force them to use vi.

Re:You know what this means, folks...

[drdink]

I am a legally blind FreeBSD (and former Linux) user. What is the problem? Yes, it takes some adaption, but that is no reason not to do it. If all else fails, you SSH to the machine from Windows using a screen reader.

Re:You know what this means, folks...

[1lus10n]

I call bullshit, And if I had mod points I would mod your ass down as a troll.

The average end user distro requires the same level of knowledge as the average windows install. Not to mention the potential difficulty behind trying to find a braille friendly license key.

I know several blind people (legally blind, and completely blind) who use linux/BSD both as a main operating system and as a hobby system.

Think about what your saying before you go off on some "linux is not user friendly" tangent, people who already know windows might have a hard time adapting but most people dont know enough for it to be a problem, (mind you that the average person doesnt even do updates) not to speak of people who know nothing at all.

Re:You know what this means, folks...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why?

This is an extemely small market and not likely to win that many converts. Its not like the screen reader for win is from M$.

Re:You know what this means, folks...

[CountBrass]

Unfortunately it's precisely what OS/Free developers have proved themselves crap at producing time and time again: It's User Interface *and* of no use to the developers. It has no chance.

Re:You know what this means, folks...

[Anonymous Coward]

slashdot is for dumb cunts

Re:You know what this means, folks...

[kundor]

It's already in the kernel...

You can replace your text consoles with speech consoles in make menuconfig.

Re:You know what this means, folks...

[phaze3000]

Like Speak Up you mean?

Re:You know what this means, folks...

[Oniros]

The best programmer I paired with for labs at the university was blind. He was running Linux with a text to braille gizmo under his laptop. The fact all was text based was a boon for him (he didn't use X, he probably used screen.)

Most students had a hard time following his lead because he knew all the code of the projects he worked on by heart (I think he has a perfect memory), so be jumped left and right in the code (going directly at the right line number) at an amazing speed. We worked on his box simulatenously through kibbitz.

Re:You know what this means, folks...

[Ice_Balrog]

Something like KSayIt perhaps?

Re:You know what this means, folks...

[Jon Abbott]

What happens when you compile a kernel, or better yet, run xaos in ascii-art mode? Does it go on speaking for five years? :^)

Re:You know what this means, folks...

[reso]

i wish i were dumb so i could fit in better at your family events

Re:You know what this means, folks...

[2nd Post!]

Yes, but an average OS X install is 10x easier than an average Windows install :)

Of course Windows is getting easier, as is Linux, but the Mac is still easier :)

Re:You know what this means, folks...

[mike collins]

been done for years. Emacspeak for 1. Speechd is what I use. Have fun.

Re:You know what this means, folks...

[Lars T.]

The sad thing is that you probably do believe this is a screen reader (and not something that comes with MacOS for over 10 years).

Re:You know what this means, folks...

[1lus10n]

no argument here. however at this point OSXis less accessible to the blind.

FUD.

[Anonymous Coward]

While screen readers may cost "up to" thousands of dollars, the submiter conveniently ignores the fact that recent versions of Windows include text to speech services at NO ADDITIONAL COST.

So, congratulations Apple for catching up :)

Re:FUD.

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft has supported some TTS through their "agents" since at least windows 98.

I got a cheap book on agent programming, and toyed with the idea of making the most intentionally obnoxiously annoying agent I could to see if it would magically be useful. The idea I came up with was "Bit" from Tron, it would only say Yes, No, YES YES YES, NO NO NO, or just oscillate. No matter what you did, anywhere in windows, it would provoke one of these actions, and if someone had a mic plugged in, it would listen and answer with 1 of the 5 actions as a person mumbled to themselves or talked to the computer. Ultimately I decided it was fun as an idea. And for the pain in the ass it would have been to make, it was just better to not waste the time.

Re:FUD.

[MoneyT]

Catching up? The mac os has had built in text to speech features since OS 7.5 at least. In 7.5 you could have any document on screen read back to you. Mac OS 8 added the feature to onscreen buttons and dialouge boxes. This is a full screen reader, as in every part of the screen from menues to buttons to dialouge boxes to web pages to applications.

Re:FUD.

[Anonymous Coward]

So, congratulations Apple for catching up :)

For catching up to windows with something MacOS has had for 15 years? yeah right.

Simple Text to Speech is not "An entirely spoken interface". It's a pity that with all the ability you display in being able to reply to a story, you still failed to comprehend it.

Move over and let someone more able-minded in, please.

Re:FUD.

[zackeller]

Microsoft's TTS is about what Apple had ten years ago. All it does is churp out window titles and text without much intelligence; something fairly useless to those who can't see it in the first place. Apple's solution actually helps them navigate and perform tasks.

Re:FUD.

[codeonezero]

How well does the Windows screenreader work? Do you have to get special versions of all the apps to work? How easy is it to make a screenreader aware application in Windows?
Please anyone care to answer this?

From following Apple's development of OS X, it seems to me that the idea behind Apple's upcoming Screenreader, is that you wont have to rewrite your applications to take advantage of this...if I remember correctly the capability is already in.

Never using the Windows screenreader myself maybe it works just like Apple intends it to have theirs work.

Though Apple may not be the first to provide it, I'm sure they'll make a good job that it will raise some eye brows. That or Apple is beleagured ;-)

Re:FUD.

[drdink]

As a legally blind person and a person who has used various screen reader programs, I assure you that the Microsoft solution integrated into Windows just blows. It lacks features that any retail screenreader would have. The Microsoft one just blindly reads dialog boxes and stuff with no intelligence, no ability to really convey to the user how data is laid out, etc. The "screen reader" that is in Windows 2000 and up is about on par with what has been in MacOS for a long time. I agree with this article that any decent screen reading software costs hundreds of dollars. In my opinion, the Microsoft solution isn't useful for much more than installing Windows and getting your screenreader installed. Oh, and MacOS X's screen magnification stuff kicks the ass off of the Magnifier integrated in Windows 2000 and up.

Re:FUD.

[Anonymous Coward]

How exactly does a blind person know that a screen magnifier kicks ass?

You start off telling us that you're blind, and then you move on to tell us how great some visual enhancement is?

I smell bullshit ;)

Re:FUD.

[Anonymous Coward]

Macintalk was around before System 7, at least in the late 1980s (1988 perhaps). It's quite a refined text to speech system.

I know TTS isn't the only part of a Spoken Interface, but Apple have the experience in that part at least, going back more than a decade and a half.

Re:FUD.

[fromlag]

I love Microsoft!
G.Bill is God!!

Re:FUD.

[drdink]

No, you don't need special versions of all your applications. The screen readers use APIs and trickery in Windows to peel the text out of menus, dialogs, etc. It then reads it. So, as long as applications use the standard Windows methods for putting stuff on the screen, they will be *fairly* compatible with speech software. However, when software starts to get fancy, uses graphics for text, etc, then you start to get problems. You also get problems when data is formatted oddly on the screen, such as in tables. The Windows screenreader is very limited in nature, only really able to read dialog boxes. I don't remember if it can even read menus. The MacOS X stuff can read almost anything under the mouse pointer, and I look forward to see what enhancements come to OS X with this new screen reader. Hope this answers your question to some degree.

Re:FUD.

[Anonymous Coward]

I use a screen reader, and the TTS one that iswith windows, is extreamly bad.

Re:FUD.

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem quite able bodied yourself, yet failed to actually read the parent post you replied to even though you saw it with perfect clarity.

Go back and read it again. LEGALLY BLIND. I'm pretty clueless when it comes to accessibility options myself, but even I know that it doesn't take 100% sight loss to be considered legally blind. Lose an eye and then get a cataract in the other one and you'd be there too.

Re:FUD.

[drdink]

A very good question. I said I was "legally blind", not "physically blind." Legally blind means your vision is worse than 20/200. My vision is far worse than that. I can't even see the big E on the eye chart, and only have been able to once or twice throughout my entire life. So, I can see but not very well. My eye doctor has a very unscientific method to determine if my vision has changed since I can't use the eyechart. Counting fingers at X feet.

Re:FUD.

[modder]

I'm legally blind myself and generally do not need to use any magnifier.

I usually just need to be a lot closer to the screen than most other users.

I use Linux a lot, and enjoy the Ctrl+ feature of Mozilla.

On Windows, I simply up the screen size by changing from 1024 768 to 800 600. (I wished linux could do this.)

I'm curious if you have any experience with gnopernicus which I tried to compile using an older Red Hat distro. I've since upgraded to Fedora but have yet to play with gnopernicus after all of the problems I originally encountered. (Which were likely all my fault for not using appropriate lib versions...)

Re:FUD.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry that you cannot differentiate between an interface reader and text-to-speech capability.

T2S has beeen integrated into Macs before Microsoft even decided to include the bloated engine with annoying characters into it. On Macs, however, this has been ideal for years. With OSX, the T2S is simply wonderful and natural sounding, a la AT&T Natural Voices.

It is really handy whenever I'm wardriving with my powerbook and kisMac. I put it on a passenger seat and it announces whether there is a signal, along with the intensity. I am planning to fix NMAP to do the same in the near future. Scan for exploitable ports and announce the specifics upon discovery. This would make the process much easier.

Re:FUD.

[mentin]

You don't need a special version, you add accessibility features to your application.

If your application is composed of regular dialogs, you don't actually need to do much, since standard controls provide reasonable default implementation of accessibilty API.

In more complex applications, you implement accesibility interfaces that describe your application objects, and the way user may interact with them.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?ur l= /library/en-us/msaa/msaastart_9w2t.asp

Re:FUD.

[drdink]

You sound very similar to me. I also change color schemes to be white on black. Unfortunately, you can't do this on MacOS X (unless you use the Accessability option, which turns your display to greyscale). As a result, I've found myself using the OS X screen magnification features. They are very nice and I've learned to use them seamlessly. I do everything else you mentioned that you do, as well. I did set out to use gnopernicus once, but never really got around to finishing it. I seem to recall it wanting to use Festival for the speech output part, which seemed somewhat ugly to me. I also didn't much care for the GNOME screen magnification stuff I could find and get working.

Re:FUD.

[fromlag]

Anyway, I am applying for trademark registration of the word "blind."!!!?

Re:FUD.

[zcat_NZ]

There's a big difference between "text to speech" and a screen reader. Blind users need to hear windows titles, error messages, menu text, etc. Try unplugging your monitor and see how far you can get with MS's inbuilt text to speech. It's hard enough even with a proper screen reader, completely impossible with "cut-and-paste" TTS.

BTW; I recommend downloading the trial version of JAWS and seeing how much you can do. It takes a lot of getting used to! Don't cheat, leave the monitor OFF.

Re:FUD.

[baryon351]

for what it's worth, I'm not blind (well - myopic to all hell, but I can still read the screen without glasses as long as I'm a foot from it) but there's nothing like the OSX screen magnification for quick/easy/simple zooming in on ANY app to take a closer peek. Whether it be a small image on a webpage, a small embedded movie, a WMP movie (when trying to get win media player to play fullscreen is a pain in the ass slooow process, zooming is just quicker) or just zooming in to IRC from the sofa across the room, it's brilliant. Just Works!

Re:FUD.

[modder]

Yeah, the color thing is a problem as well. I'm completely color blind, Ctrl A is my friend a lot fo times for web pages.

What bothers me so much is that all of these hacks don't scale, literally. For example, when you up the font size in any given GUI environment, it typically only applies to the content. The meta stuff, like menu bars, remain small. Ironically even if you do it on a "system wide" basis. I've seen in gnome the content of the menus, (stuff you pull down) will scale to larger text, but the menu from which you "pulled down" is still using small fonts.

Even more irritating, and the reason I bothered with gnopernicus in the first place, was that applets in a web page don't get resized. (I play this online game which uses an applet and I'm completely hosed on anything other than windows, which doesn't let me scale *everything* up to 800 x 600).

Re:FUD.

[drdink]

I have no bias. I own two Windows machines, one FreeBSD machine, and one Apple machine. I will blatantly tell you when something Apple does sucks, because I didn't really even like Apple until this last year when I actually gave OS X a try. My opinion has nothing to do with how many people use each OS, but is rather how I evaluate their included accessability *utilities*. Now to take you to task on your bit about more people using Windows. This is *exactly* why more people say that Microsoft has better accessability features than Apple, because more people are looking at the Microsoft solutions. On top of this, when people are praising "accessability features", they are not praising the software (Screen Reader, Magnifier) bundled with Windows. They are praising the APIs provided by the operating system for use by these utilities. The Microsoft-included utilities suck. There are other, third-party, applications that use these same APIs (and others) and do a much better job than what Microsoft
Windows provides. Apple does not lag behind Windows. If anything, Apple is ahead of Windows. I do not mean this in the sense that Apple is ahead of Windows when it comes to open APIs, but rather Apple is ahead of Windows with the *utilities* it provides. The Apple speech and magnification software included inside OS X (Universal Access) is very good considerring it wasn't designed to be a full-fledged screenreader/magnifier. I do believe that Microsoft is ahead when it comes to having open APIs for software to use, but I'm not really fully qualified to make this claim since I do not do Universal Access programming.

Re:FUD.

[Anonymous Coward]

take a vitamin C and bioflavonoid complex. They do wonders for your eyes.

Re:FUD.

[hazem]

On my laptop (a CTL), everything is normaly too small. At first I changed the resolution to make things larger, but this causes fuzziness due to interpolation.

I later discovered that I have a DPI setting. By adjusting that, and staying in my "default resolution", things can be made larger or smaller without the fuzziness.

I do not know, however, if this is a feature of Windows XP, or of the video driver that comes on my laptop (ATI Rage something).

I really like using my laptop, now that everything is larger and easier to read!

Re:FUD.

[krymsin01]

On Windows, I simply up the screen size by changing from 1024 768 to 800 600. (I wished linux could do this.)

Do some research and find out how to configure x11. It's very easy to change the resolution of the GUI. I'm not sure about how you would go about changing the resolution of a command line, but I'm quite certain it can be done...

Re:FUD.

[modder]

Yeah XP runs great on my laptop. Problem is, I never use it.

There's also like 20 different places to adjust the size it seems. Sometimes things get too large and can't be dynamically adjusted.

Re:FUD.

[ianezz]

On Windows, I simply up the screen size by changing from 1024 768 to 800 600. (I wished linux could do this.)

You have two options:

1. Ctrl+Alt+ plus/minus on the numerical keypad, to switch between video modes. It doesn't resize your desktop, but it offers an enlarged view that you can scroll with the mouse pointer. It has been in XFree86 since day zero.
2. XFree86 4.3 introduces the RandR extension, allowing both to change the video mode AND the desktop size, effectively changing resolution on the fly. There's a simple applet for Gnome 2 (it's gnome-randr-applet on Debian unstable) that offers access to that, don't know about KDE.

Re:FUD.

[inquisitor]

The DPI feature is a new-to-XP feature, and with modern laptop screens accelerating in resolution (mine is a 15" screen at 1600x1200, ISTR some are now doing 1920x1480+) the DPI feature is an absolute lifesaver, even for someone who isn't legally blind. DPI, along with ClearType, are the only reasons I use XP instead of Windows 2000 on my laptop.

Most programs work fine with it (including, gratifyingly, Firefox/Thunderbird). A couple of badly written pieces of software - mostly old freeware VB programs - choke, a couple of graphics are misaligned here or there (but nothing in the base system) and it generally works OK. Combine it with ClearType, and XP works very well on a laptop screen; certainly much better than any other version of Windows.

Re:FUD.

[Anonymous Coward]

"I can't do more than install windows and get your screenreader installed". That's *precisely* what that built-in screenreader is designed to do. If MSFT put in anything with more full functionality, the screenreader market would dry up inside of a year.

Have you ever been to CSun, or other accessibility conferences? Do you know how small the accessibility market is? Most of these categories of software and/or hardware have about 2 or 3 major competitors, tops, worldwide. (Example: name me more than 3 major commercial screen magnifiers.)

If the OS could work as well as you're expecting, why would any sane person buy a seperate screenreader? For once, MSFT is deliberately trying _not_ to compete...

Re:FUD.

[macdaddy]

Catching up my ass. Apple wrote the book in text-to-speech software long ago, pal. There's no catching up involved except on Microsoft's and Linux's part as far as text-to-speech goes.

Re:FUD.

[buckminster]

Actually, it's windows that is catching up. Mac has had text to speech services for quite a while.

Also, there's a huge difference between a text-to-speech service and a screen reading application. A screen reader allows a sight impared user to actually navigate around the OS and use a variety of applications. Text-to-speech is not that comprehensive. Just try closing your eyes and actually doing anything constructive with your Windows speech service.

Text-to-speech is actually of more value for users with dyslexia or poor literacy.

Re:FUD.

[moodsoft]

I have a friend who is totally blind, and uses a screen reader. She is able to use just about any program currently availble. She doesn't need to buy anything special, just off the shelf programs.

Re:FUD.

[jasonditz]

While this is more than just a simple "screen reader", this is still a valid point. Its like saying "Windows Keyboards can cost up to $700, but my $199 Walmart PC included on at no additional cost".

Re:FUD.

[drdink]

Yes, I am aware that the accessability market is very small. That is also why prices are so high. Yes, I have been to these conferences, and I've seen how hard they try to push their product on you. It is quite entertaining. The Blaise guy was so trying to sell me a Type 'n Speak that he was coming off as an asshole.
I'm not expecting the OS to work any better than it does. It would be nice if it did, but I also understand it would kill competition and lock those users who needed it into using a single product. In essence, we'd all be Microsofted.
I am, however, glad to see Apple doing something on their platform since there is no real solution available anymore. Maybe by adding/enhancing their APIs, some other company will cmme along and make one better than the one built into the OS. Only time will tell...

Re:FUD.

[Morky]

Dude, Apple had text to speech in the OS in System 1 in 1984. I personally remember playing with it in 1985.

Re:FUD.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just ignore this, this guy obviously doesn't know anything. If I had karma, I'd mod him down.

Re:FUD.

[Anonymous Coward]

I had text to speech on my Newton. MacinTalk. Apple ain't playing catch up here. But then again, that's not what this is all about.

Re:FUD.

[bob670]

Were you labeling your own post FUD, there's nothing close to a full screen reader in any version of Windows, and it will now be up to MS to steal inspiration from Apple again. Of course, they are used to it, and so are Windows/MS apologist so I don't suspect anyone will notice.

Curious

[some1somewhere]

If you are both blind and deaf, how do you navigate around the screen, move the mouse pointer, etc.? You wouldn't even be able to use voice commands properly (especially those who were unfortunate enough to be born this way), as the pronunciation would be off/different compared with most other people.

I imagine this would work on a text-only interface, but with graphics, windows, etc. how does one navigate in such a way?

Re:Curious

[Beardydog]

There are machines that print braille from computer screens in realtime. Ever seen the movie Sneakers?

Re:Curious

[Anonymous Coward]

He is asking how they would navigate a window based envorment. Not a texted based one. A blind and deaf person would use DOS or the linux consule. On a side note I have alwas wonder how someone born Blind-Deaf would due in astro physics and quitem mechincs. If you look at it them might do better then someone who can see and hear because there mind would have developed differnetly due to the lack of audio and visual stimul and there differ concepts of space.

Re:Curious

[krymsin01]

Yes, and as we learned from that movie, it's OK for the blind to drive vans.

Re:Curious

[Beardydog]

Haptics looks pretty interesting to me. Mice are being developed that can send texture information to the user as they move the cursor across the screen. I don't know how far along the technology is, but when I saw it it I wanted one myself.

Re:Curious

[Beardydog]

I knew a diabetic fellow for a while who used to roll down the windows when he drove, because it made the oncoming cars easier to hear.

Re:Curious

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that why there braille on the drive-up ATM?

Re:Curious

[some1somewhere]

Yes... i can see how easy it would be to translate a DOS prompt or Linux prompt text into braille... but i just can't see how Windows, etc. can be translated.

I wonder how those XXX popups are translated... hehe... can you imagine "feeling" on of those big, round... *grin*

Re:Curious

[iantri]

If you are really interested, you can download the trial version of JAWS for Windows.

(I am not deaf-blind), but AFAIK most blind people interface with the computer via a text-to-speech interface or a braille display, using (or mostly) a keyboard. Obviously, the deaf-blind person would only be able to use the braille device). The screen-reader will read out your keypresses (or in the case of the deaf-blind person, output to braille device), but you should be able to easily memorize the positions of all the keys on the keyboard (any sighted geek can).

The screen-reader outputs the same way as it would for text-to-speech, just for braille instead.

I think it would be quite the PITA, though.

Cue the jokes

[Anonymous Coward]

The story mentions people who are different from most others. The trolls will feast today.

Hurrah for Apple.

Re:Cue the jokes

[Anonymous Coward]

The story mentions people who are different from most others. The trolls will feast today.

What would really set off the trolls would be if it mentioned apps designed for gay Mac users.

Re:Cue the jokes

[Anonymous Coward]

All Mac apps are designed for gay Mac users. No news there.

However,there is some news here

Macs for the blind

[zackeller]

If Apple wants to get into a new market, this is it. Give out a free screen reader, make it work with major applications like Office and Safari, and you've just cornered the entire blind market.

Re:Macs for the blind

[Anonymous Coward]

I could make a joke about cornering blind people, but is it even necessary?

Re:Macs for the blind

[Hektor_Troy]

In other words - blind-siding the likes of Microsoft?

Re:Macs for the blind

[sameyeam]

Windows2k has a screen reader built in...admittedly it doesn't work too well, but it's there.

Re:Macs for the blind

[sporty]

Aw man.. you know.. God doesn't like ugly. Well.. in this case, I guess it doesn't matter, eh?

Re:Macs for the blind

[BWJones]

My research is in retinal degenerations, but where I work, we have patients who lose their vision for a number of reasons from trauma to corneal problems to diabetes and other pathologies. One of our most valuable services we have is helping people make the transition from the world of the sighted to living without vision cues. I am currently looking at this code for OS X (have known about it for some time) and I will push hard to make it the de-facto standard for our patients as it simplifies their life (try dealing with all the various security problems and stability problems of Windows without using your eyes) and will be easier on their budgets as it will come free with OS X.

uh

[SweetAndSourJesus]

Macs have included text-to-speech for quite some time. What they're offering is a completely spoken user interface.

Oh, and at NO ADDITIONAL COST.

Re:uh

[fermion]

Perhaps I am just responding to propaganda, but it seems to me that apple has always tried to be accessible out of the box. The single button mouse is great help to people with limited hand movements. The ability to zoom the screen helps people without perfect vision. Voice control to start applications. Reading of text on the screen. Talking alerts.

I don't know the full array of available windows modifications, but I've always wondered how MS products end up in public locations that are supposed to be 100% accessible.

A full screen reader will be a nice improvement. Now all we have to do educate web developers, or more specifically web site development applications, to make accessible web sites. Of course, if the screen readers skip the advertisement, the differently abed will be accused of stealing content and probably become listed as terrorists.

Re:uh

[Anonymous Coward]

> has always tried to be accessible out of the box

Not. Try operating older versions of the system from just the keyboard.

Re:uh

[MoneyT]

Mouse keys works perfectly. In case you don't know, mouse keys is a setting found in the Mac OS (and has been there for a long time) which allows you to use the keyboard to control your mouse.

Re:uh

[Foolhardy]

How about not even needing the mouse or needing to control the cursor at all; as in having keyboard shortcuts that can do everything.
Properly written Windows programs (everything from MS that I have used) do not require the use of the mouse cursor for anything, since at least Win3.1.

Re:uh

[MoneyT]

So then the complaint isnt't that the OS is inaccessable, it's that you don't like the way it's implimented.

Re:uh

[notsoclever]

Properly written Windows programs (everything from MS that I have used) do not require the use of the mouse cursor for anything

That sounds like an application issue, not an OS issue.

OSX apps have full keyboard access by default as long as the developer uses standard widgets (and the user enables the shortcut key for activating the menu bar). Good apps also have shortcut keys for nearly everything. Additionally, as of OS X 10.3 the user can define shortcut keys for every menu item in Cocoa apps (though the interface for it is still a bit kludgy).

Braille?

[DanThe1Man]

No mention of Braille-display support yet, which many blind and deaf-blind people need and want

If little glass bumps come shooting out of my monitor, I'm going to be scared.

Re:Braille?

[hazem]

Maybe not the monitor, but it seems I've read about a system where the mice have tactile feedback. As you move the mouse across certain features of the screen (open space, title bars, window borders, etc), you get different kinds of tactile sensations with the mouse... eg, a "bump" when you cross a border.

It would be interesting to see if this has been used to help blind computer users.

Re:Braille?

[Bitsy Boffin]

You jest, but braille "displays" do exist. Infact you can even get braille notebooks.

I had a quick play with the technology at a demonstration once (I live in Christchurch, where this is developed), quite interesting for a sighted person.

Re:Braille?

[pherris]

Why not something like a medium resolution LCD screen but instead of pixels of light have pixels of small metal posts (like those "pin art" toys). Of course translating text in to braille. Each pixel could be pressure sensitive for user feedback. Cover it with a removable gel surface to smooth things out.

Could this be done?

Re:Braille?

[pe1chl]

Blind computer users have used these for many years.

The SuSE Linux distribution even supports their use during OS installation!

Re:Braille?

[Anonymous Coward]

Blind computer users have used these for many years.

I'm curious, do you know of anyone making such a device?

Re:Braille?

[jsebrech]

Braille displays have a tendency to be line at a time devices separate from the actual monitor.

Re:Braille?

[waynelorentz]

I had a legally blind friend who had a braille notebook. This was back in the DOS days, before windows. It didn't have a screen -- just the braille keyboard, and a floppy drive, and a speaker. I guess it looked more like a long black brick than a notebook.

The thing that always amused me about it was that it was from Australia, and the speech synthesizer spoke with an Australian accent. I would have thought that computers would make accent-less speech, but I was wrong.

Re:Braille?

[Anonymous Coward]

The SuSE Linux distribution even supports their use during OS installation!

Which is why I like SuSE.

Of course, I was somewhat dissapointed to discover that if the braille display unit isn't connected before installation, it is a bitch to add.

Re:Braille?

[Anonymous Coward]

you can even get braille notebooks.

Look at the price of the price of that notebook. Yikes.

At least it isn't as much as a Braille Display units. OTOH, Braille printers aren't much cheaper.

Anyway, now I know what to get my significant other.

Re:Braille?

[PCM2]

Yet what I've heard recently (somebody correct me if I've been misinformed) is that the actual utility of Braille in our society is so limited these days that most blind people do not bother to learn it. It's a tool that seems useful on the surface but is gradually growing extinct -- like shorthand, which at one time all journalists were required to use, but now is seldom even taught.

Re:On Windows they cost up to $1,295

[myownkidney]

(Score:0, Troll)

Shows how much /. moderators care about blind people, or any people for that matters. Long live herd mentality.

Internet Screen Readers are very unfriendly.

[ratfynk]

The majority of web sites are not exactly "screen reader friendly" I have seen some visually disabled individuals using MS based screen readers. They quickly dump the junk. Not to mention ignorant e-mails that include junk giffs and xml twaddle! .NET inet scripting is the problem. I have seen disabled kids heart broken, because their parents spent thousands on MS software, and .NET garbage.

Re:Internet Screen Readers are very unfriendly.

[davidstrauss]

.NET inet scripting is the problem. I have seen disabled kids heart broken, because their parents spent thousands on MS software, and .NET garbage.

What does a server-side scripting language have to do with making a site "screen reader friendly"? And what about XML too? I work on sites for politicians, and we try to make our sites screen reader friendly. Our efforts have nothing to do with the server side (.NET) or data exchange mechanism (XML).

Re:Internet Screen Readers are very unfriendly.

[Anonymous Coward]

What does a server-side scripting language have to do with making a site "screen reader friendly?

The default is for a plethora of graphics, and no content.

If you can browse your website using lynx, from circa 1995, without any problems, then somebody using a screen reader can successfully navigate your website. If your website fails that test, then it is screen-reader hostile.

Re:Internet Screen Readers are very unfriendly.

[whorfin]

The original poster may have blamed the wrong technology, but the fact is that JAWS and Window Eyes (the big Windows Screen Readers), although they are undoubtedly fantastic advances over lack of access, are also somewhat flaky and fragile, and have a very complex user interface for navigating the computer. Combine this with the fact that software needs to be written thinking about working with screen readers to actually work properly/well and most software isn't, and the overall experience can be quite frustrating.

Integrated?

[Anonymous Coward]

(from the Apple site)

--snip

Built-in, not bolted on

The Mac OS X spoken interface delivers many of the features found in traditional, add-on screen reader applications with one important difference; the spoken interface is completely integrated into Mac OS X. Unlike traditional screen reader applications that are designed as bolted-on after thoughts, the Mac OS X spoken interface is fully integrated into Mac OS X providing an unprecedented level of built-in accessibility for a desktop operating system.

-- snip

Oh No! It's integrated! I think we better contact the European government on this one, and maybe the US DoJ too. We can't let these blatent acts of integrating features in to operating systems continue! Sue! Sue! For the love of all that is good and holy and competative, sue!

Re:Integrated?

[seringen]

Why not have a heart for a change? I know this is a troll, but seriously, providing necessary services for the blind in your operating system is a little different than having to use your web browser to update your operating system. Jeez.

Re:Integrated?

[PetWolverine]

Unlike Microsoft, Apple is not a convicted monopolist. The rules change when you break them.

Re:Integrated?

[Llywelyn]

Oh No! It's integrated! I think we better contact the European government on this one, and maybe the US DoJ too. We can't let these blatent acts of integrating features in to operating systems continue! Sue! Sue! For the love of all that is good and holy and competative, sue!

What competition would they be driving out, exactly? The only providers of this feature closed up shop in 2003.

Re:Integrated?

[Anonymous Coward]

Proof positive that sarcasm is lost on some people

Linux has free screenreaders too

[MooKore 2004]

Checkout Gnpernicus. Free screenreader for GNOME and GNOME compatible desktops.

Unlikely to happen

[Canberra Bob]

Unlikely to happen any time soon

Why?

The same reason documentation is lagging in FOSS, its not "cool". Everyone wants to be in on the latest desktop environment / compiler / kernel because it gets the publicity. A screen reader will not give you the cool factor that submitting a patch for the kernel would.

And unlike commercial software, there is no profit motive.

This is why Linux will struggle for a while to gain mainstream desktop acceptance. Linux offers an excellent mainstream desktop, as long as your requirements arent slightly different. If they are, have fun trying to find something to satisfy your requirements. If people are going to switch, they need that bit extra - something they wont find on a commercial OS. Which is why it is rather annoying that the major desktop environments are trying to follow the Windows methodology rather than finding what Windows doesnt offer, and filling the niche.

Re:Unlikely to happen

[Anonymous Coward]

Troll, troll, troll, troll....

Take a look at what KDE and GNOME are doing for accessibility. SuSE have had a braille reader for bootup logging for *years*.

There *is* a percieved need for this sort of work, and clever people are working on it.

"There are none so blind as those who do not wish to see".

Re:Unlikely to happen

[unapersson]

"The same reason documentation is lagging in FOSS, its not "cool". Everyone wants to be in on the latest desktop environment / compiler / kernel because it gets the publicity. A screen reader will not give you the cool factor that submitting a patch for the kernel would."

Sorry, but that's absolute rubbish:
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gap/
http://leb.net/blinux/

I can't believe the uninformed postings in this thread. Just because you're not aware of it doesn't mean it isn't happening. You can use a screenreader within Linux right now, try Gnopernicus within Gnome. A lot of accessibility work is taking place and access to this technology is all free.

Re:Unlikely to happen

[Anonymous Coward]

You couldn't be more wrong. GNOME has been committed to accessiblity for a couple of years now (thanks to Sun), and has stitched it into the base of the desktop (look up ATK -- it's part of GTK2), including all the apps needed for full accessiblity.

KDE has recently realised how important this is too, and is desperately trying to leverage all the work done by GNOME hackers... sadly, they are a long way behind and will be for the foreseeable future.

Re:Unlikely to happen

[waynelorentz]

Linux offers an excellent mainstream desktop, as long as your requirements arent slightly different. If they are, have fun trying to find something to satisfy your requirements.

Sounds very much like a well-known OS out of Redmond.

Re:Unlikely to happen

[00420]

Unlikely to happen any time soon

It's already happened. Read the other posts in this thread.

The same reason documentation is lagging in FOSS, its not "cool". Everyone wants to be in on the latest desktop environment / compiler / kernel because it gets the publicity. A screen reader will not give you the cool factor that submitting a patch for the kernel would.

If you develop OSS to be "cool" then you must have a very boring life.

And unlike commercial software, there is no profit motive.

That's pretty much true. OSS developers tend to program in order to make useful utilities for themseleves or others. Not just to make a buck. (Although, you can make a buck because OSS is about freedom not free prices).

Re:Unlikely to happen

[b-baggins]

OSS developers tend to program in order to make useful utilities for themseleves or others.

drop of the "or others" and you'll have it right. Linux is a "scratch an itch" product, and that's why it will never be truly ready for the desktop, because the people who write for it, as a general rule, despise end users as technically illiterate and there is no profit motive to accomodate them.

Re:Unlikely to happen

[00420]

Linux is a "scratch an itch" product, and that's why it will never be truly ready for the desktop, because the people who write for it, as a general rule, despise end users as technically illiterate

Try a modern distro (perhaps found in my sig), and then try your post again.

Not hardly

[iamacat]

Linux configuration (and use) can be mostly done from the command line, which is nicely amendable to a screen reader interface. Windows and OSX configuration on the other hand...

Re:Not hardly

[Anonymous Coward]

So what happens when you type in your first ./configure? Does it read all of the script back to you? Possible, yes... maddening? That too.

Re:Not hardly

[Anonymous Coward]

Last time I checked, OS X is a *BSD, which should have the same style underpinnings, thus being just as easily command-line configurable...

Re:Not hardly

[Magnus Reftel]

man niutil

Re:Not hardly

[2nd Post!]

OS X configuration can also be done on the command line. Look in /etc :)

Re:On Windows they cost up to $1,295

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit.

The author of the post is citing how terribly expensive it is for the blind to use a computer. Note that he ALSO notes that Apple before this had no screen reader since 2001. Does that mean that he wants to see OS X burn?

Look, I love roasting Microsoft over an open flame as much as anyone, but this is NOT it. It's a commentary on the sad state of computer accessability for the disabled and the horrific expenses incurred by what little is there.

Re:On Windows they cost up to $1,295

[drdink]

Sadly, this is a byproduct of a free market. Less demand means higher prices. There aren't many people buying screenreaders, since there aren't that many blind people compared to other people. However, most blind people can get assistance from organizations and the government for buying this sort of thing.

Parent Not insightful, more like ignorant

[Anonymous Coward]

Most Modern Linux distributions (no, Debian and Slackware aren't "modern") have special accessibility features, such as braille machine support, plus linux can installed, configured and maintained easily. I recommend SuSE a the most accessible distro!

Moderators, please try out a modern distro before modding up ignorance!

Re:On Windows they cost up to $1,295

[myownkidney]

However, most blind people can get assistance from organizations and the government for buying this sort of thing. And the money ends up in the coffers of MS...

Re:On Windows they cost up to $1,295

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem is, of the first 5 people to mod a comment, how many make up the majoriy "view"?

Perhaps there should be more meta-moderators, but does that just weed out bad mods or what?

Hmmm.

So I have mod points today, and made it "interesting" since I have actually done some work with a quadraplegic who manages to run an entire hotel and would be completely lost without Dragon Naturally Speaking patched into his chair headset.

I wish people would stop modding down "because it's wrong" - in this case it is perhpas a bit unrealistic, but certainly not a troll.

Re:Forgive me if I sound cynical

[HellsAngel]

So you'd rather that they not make this and let blind people have the "freedom" to choose what thousand dollar screen reader to buy for what platform, instead of having it built in FOR FREE?!? Yup let them spend thousand of dollars just to avoid a "lock-out". I can't believe you.

Re:Forgive me if I sound cynical

[Anonymous Coward]

nothing better than an anti mac troll from an amiga lover!

Beta testing

[Killjoy_NL]

Ok, to become a betatester, do I have to poke my eyes out ??

Re:Beta testing

[SuperBanana]

Ok, to become a betatester, do I have to poke my eyes out ??

No. Push the power button on the monitor ;-)

Or for iMac users and the like, you can buy the iSheet from Dr. Bott...a piece of super-thin semi-opaque fiberous wood material(made from only the best wood, mind you) complete with space-age fasteners(strips of plastic with adhesive on them!)

Re:On Windows they cost up to $1,295

[myownkidney]

Geeks care more about computers than people.

I would've expected an outcry over the amount of money these visually impaired people have to pay for a screen reader. Instead, they mod me down as a Troll!

Quite a few of the ./ers are developers. And if they don't give a fine f*** about accessibility, then there's not much hope for disabled people.

Windows ... up to $1,295 - Linux - $0

[ErichTheWebGuy]

I have a blind friend who has been using kSayIt for a while and loves it! He also loves the freedom in being able to choose his distro, desktop environment, window manager, e-mail client, yada yada yada. Chalk up another win for Free/Open Source Software, cuz last I talked to him (earlier this week) Ronnie sez he is never going back to Windows.

Re:Windows ... up to $1,295 - Linux - $0

[dema]

I support open-source and all, but please don't give its users a bad name. This would be a great "Interesting" or "Informative" post if you had said "My friend uses the OSS kSayIt and he says it works great " and left it at that. You don't need turn it into some rude "I'm better than you because I use OSS" post.

Re:Forgive me if I sound cynical

[eclectro]

Well if windows had one that wasn't junk (as user drdink noted above) and somebody could code one for open source that really worked apple wouldn't have a monopoly.

In as much it might lock some people into apple's platform, I do not see how that would hinder competition in this market. If there is a better, lower cost solution people will migrate to it.

What is something to be more cynical about are all the webmasters who thoughtlessly don't code well enough so a blind person might navigate their site properly.

At least apple is doing something.

Do you think there will ever be a screen reader for flash??

WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not like this article is about Apple patenting the "spoken interface" they are using, and they aren't stopping anybody else from doing the same with their products.

What would you prefer? That they don't offer this feature? Or would you seriously expect them to write a free API and closely integrate it into every OS out there?

Re:Forgive me if I sound cynical

[ffsnjb]

Apple produces a product, Mac OSX. Now they're introducing a new product to go along with OSX, which has the possibility to be very helpful, for free.

There exists alternatives to OSX (Windows and the various commercial screenreaders hinted at in the summary), therefore there is no monopoly. Possibly an oligopoly, but that's only due to a limited marketplace and the lack of a need to have many competitors.

Chill, this is a good thing.

Re:Forgive me if I sound cynical

[davidstrauss]

Do you think there will ever be a screen reader for flash??

Macromedia has an entire section in Flash MX 2004's help about making accessible applications.

Re:THIS WAS NOT A TROLL

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple is providing a feature that will make their OS better in one way than their competitor's, and that's being dodgy?

God forbid Windows and Linux then add a similar features in order to compete and give blind people more choices.

Re:On Windows they cost up to $1,295

[myownkidney]

Moderators

Brought to you by MS

Buzz already

[gordguide]

I was having a drink with a legally blind Teacher's Assistant friend of mine Friday (the day before this hit Slashdot) after work. He's a die-hard Windows user, precisely because of the (yes, this is the right price) $1200 application mentioned briefly in the article, which he uses.

I was inundated with questions; the news was out so fast amongst those who need this functionality that they caught me off guard. I had heard a bit. He knew far more.

Trust me, there is real interest in this. He wanted to know what hardware to buy that would support OSX. He knew the beta was out and knew people running it, and liked the feedback he'd heard so far.

Re:Beta testing (MOD PARENT UP)

[MatrixBandit]

hah. I thought the same thing when I read about them offering it to a limited number of beta testers. Damn mods gotta keep the man down! I though Mac programmers coded in the dark anyways so one would think they wouldn't need beta testers

Why? They're only blind.

[glenalec]

Being blind does not automatically exclude you from being tech-literate. You would be amazed at what 'disabled' people can do in the face of narrow-sighted prejudice and stereotyping.

(Why was parent modded insightful? Since when has denegrating the intelectual capabilities of blind people [even in poor jest] been considered insightful?)

Re:Why? They're only blind.

[Catnapster]

The grandparent wasn't referring to their intellectual capabilities, he was pointing out that installing and configuring Linux is hard enough when you can see, and that it would be very difficult for someone who couldn't see. The key here is sight. Command-line installation is all text. Do you realize what the issue is there?

Even if Linux did have a screen reader, the task of installing and configuring it would be such a hassle to a blind individual that it would be better for them to buy a Mac. Many people, handicapped or not, are so intimidated by Linux installation that they stick with Windows. This doesn't reflect on their intellect.

In the future, try to hold back your knee-jerk reactions; it would also probably help to spell "intellectual" and "denigrate" correctly.

Re:Why? They're only blind.

[kundor]

Command-line installation is all text.

This is exactly why it's much easier for screen-readers to handle a linux environment than a windows/mac one. You can read text. It's rather more difficult to read graphics, images, buttons and the like.

Free software is actually greatly used by the disabled for computer interfaces. Unlike windows, projects can freely modify the source code to work better for the blind and other such groups, and they have. This is one of the arenas where foss shines.

Re:Why? They're only blind.

[ocelotbob]

Uh, My copy of SuSE that's a few years old had screenreader drivers built-in, so blind people could install the OS. No extra work needed. Also, what use is an accessible desktop if the installer isn't blind-friendly?

Once agin, OS X is years behind hat's easly to do in Linux.

Re:Why? They're only blind.

[Llywelyn]

This is exactly why it's much easier for screen-readers to handle a linux environment than a windows/mac one. You can read text. It's rather more difficult to read graphics, images, buttons and the like.

Obviously you've never installed something on a linux box using the command line. If it doesn't work on the first go (for whatever reason) you are going to be doing a lot of prowling through less-than-helpful text, line at a time. When some of it reads along the lines of:

gcc -c -ggdb -O2 -mcpu=7450 -malign-natural -Wno-long-double -fgnu-runtime -fno-strict-aliasing -Wall -Wno-import -Wno-protocol -Wno-long-long -DAPPVERSION=1.0d5 -I/usr/local/swarm2.2p/include ModelSwarm.m /bin/sh /usr/local/swarm2.2p/bin/libtool-swarm --mode link gcc -ggdb -O2 -mcpu=7450 -malign-natural -Wno-long-double -L/usr/local/swarm2.2p/lib -rpath /usr/local/swarm2.2p/lib -o armyants ArmyAnt.o GridCell.o main.o ObserverSwarm.o BatchSwarm.o ModelSwarm.o FoodWorld.o Parameters.o Output.o -lswarm gcc -ggdb -O2 -mcpu=7450 -malign-natural -Wno-long-double -o armyants ArmyAnt.o GridCell.o main.o ObserverSwarm.o BatchSwarm.o ModelSwarm.o FoodWorld.o Parameters.o Output.o -L/usr/local/swarm2.2p/lib /usr/local/swarm2.2p/lib/libswarm.dylib -L/Users/raven/Documents/Swarm/swarm/src/space -L/Users/raven/Documents/Swarm/swarm/src/analysis -L/Users/raven/Documents/Swarm/swarm/src/simtoolsg ui -L/Users/raven/Documents/Swarm/swarm/src/simtools -L/Users/raven/Documents/Swarm/swarm/src/random -L/Users/raven/Documents/Swarm/swarm/src/tkobjc -L/Users/raven/Documents/Swarm/swarm/src/tclobjc -L/Users/raven/Documents/Swarm/swarm/src/objectbas e -L/Users/raven/Documents/Swarm/swarm/src/activity -L/Users/raven/Documents/Swarm/swarm/src/defobj -L/Users/raven/Documents/Swarm/swarm/src/collectio ns -L/Users/raven/Documents/Swarm/swarm/src/misc -L/Users/raven/Documents/Swarm/swarm/libobjc -L/usr/local/hdf5_1.4.5p2/lib -L/usr/local/png_1.2.5/lib -L/usr/lib -L/usr/local/blt2.4z/lib -L/usr/local/tcl8.4.4/lib -L/usr/X11R6/lib -L/usr/local/tk8.4.4/lib -lBLT24 -ltk8.4 -ltcl8.4 -lXpm -lpng /usr/local/hdf5_1.4.5p2/lib/libhdf5.dylib -lpthread -lz -lX11 -lm -ldl ld: warning multiple definitions of symbol _deflate /usr/lib/libz.1.1.3.dylib(deflate.o) definition of _deflate /usr/lib/libz.dylib(deflate.o) definition of _deflate ld: warning multiple definitions of symbol _deflateCopy

Hell, you have to put up with that (x20) on a successful compile, much less an unsuccessful one.

Incidentally, your comment on the mac is pure FUD. Just about everything, with very very few exceptions, can be done through the command line.

Re:Why? They're only blind.

[waynelorentz]

Except, of course, for the fact that you don't have to _install_ OS X. It comes on the computer. All you have to do is start it up and type in your name and a few other minor details that are easily handled by the screen reader. Same story when you upgrade the OS.

When debating which system is easier to install, the one that doesn't have to be installed wins.

Once again, Linux is years behind what's easy to do in OS X.

Re:Why? They're only blind.

[Jeremy Erwin]

Obviously you've never installed something on a linux box using the command line. If it doesn't work on the first go (for whatever reason) you are going to be doing a lot of prowling through less-than-helpful text, line at a time. When some of it reads along the lines of:

gcc -c -ggdb -O2 -mcpu=7450 -malign-natural -Wno-long-double -fgnu-runtime -fno-strict-aliasing -Wall -Wno-import -Wno-protocol -Wno-long-long -DAPPVERSION=1.0d5 -I/usr/local/swarm2.2p/include ModelSwarm.m /bin/sh /usr/local/swarm2.2p/bin/libtool-swarm --mode link gcc -ggdb -O2 -mcpu=7450 -malign-natural -Wno-long-double -L/usr/local/swarm2.2p/lib -rpath /usr/local/swarm2.2p/lib -o armyants ArmyAnt.o GridCell.o main.o ObserverSwarm.o BatchSwarm.o ModelSwarm.o FoodWorld.o Parameters.o Output.o -lswarm gcc -ggdb -O2 -mcpu=7450 -malign-natural -Wno-long-double -o armyants ArmyAnt.o GridCell.o main.o ObserverSwarm.o BatchSwarm.o ModelSwarm.o FoodWorld.o Parameters.o Output.o -L/usr/local/swarm2.2p/lib /usr/local/swarm2.2p/lib/libswarm.dylib -L/Users/raven/Documents/Swarm/swarm/src/space -L/Users/raven/Documents/Swarm/swarm/src/analysis -L/Users/raven/Documents/Swarm/swarm/src/simtoolsg ui -L/Users/raven/Documents/Swarm/swarm/src/simtools -L/Users/raven/Documents/Swarm/swarm/src/random [...]

Hell, you have to put up with that (x20) on a successful compile, much less an unsuccessful one.

Put up with what? I'd rather the compiler make much ado about nothing than have the build silently fail. And even the most pedantic of compiler crud can be useful.

For instance, I can tell from your message that you're trying to compile a program on a G4 Macintosh, running MacOSX, not linux. You're also running an out of date version of hdf5...

Re:Why? They're only blind.

[Llywelyn]

Put up with what? I'd rather the compiler make much ado about nothing than have the build silently fail. And even the most pedantic of compiler crud can be useful.

Now close your eyes and listen to it and determine all of that from your ears alone without going crazy.

The full compile output from that run has 190,613 characters (not including spaces), which can be loosely separated into 12,888 words. I don't argue that it is useful, but I can visually filter it and pick out the information that is important. Sorting through that when you don't have your eyes (which is the topic of discussion here) is a somewhat more difficult.

In short, the argument that "text terminals are automatically better for those who can't see" is specious. A spoken interface can be much more friendly than anything CLI oriented, depending on exactly what the task at hand is.

Re:Why? They're only blind.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ni kidding. Once I had a TA in the EE lab at the U of Washinton who was blind. He was able to point out wrong things people did by tracing cables and asking a few questions.

Re:Why? They're only blind.

[Jeremy Erwin]

maybe it's time to dig out the old Perl books and write a build.log parser...

Re:Why? They're only blind.

[Alan Cox]

Seconded. At least one kernel developer is blind, and I never found this out until we met in person. Sun in particular have done a ton of work on Linux accessibility - screen readers, input alternatives for people with physical impairments. Not currently any accessibility for audio (which isnt that daft an issue - consider a deaf quake player and presenting them with an 'audio radar' HUD)

Also wonderful stuff like dasher, which I'm still not sure isnt really a game disguised as an access tool 8)

Good to see the Mac people will also get these kind of tools - they need to become commodities and cheap for all.

Re:Why? They're only blind.

[kundor]

I was referring to the classic mac os.

OS X falls under foss. Even so, it's more graphically oriented than many linux distros.

Anyway, screen readers make it possible to skip unimportant output, and scroll back and forth to find important parts, just as the text console does.

Re:Why? They're only blind.

[tepples]

OS X falls under foss.

No. Only Darwin does. Nothing in Mac OS X that runs on top of Quartz graphics, except perhaps Safari and a few other ported apps, is free software.

Re:Why? They're only blind.

[Anonymous Coward]

Now if only gnopernicus+festival worked properly in Fedora... To be fair, I'm not sure if gnopernicus works well with anything but Sun's java-dependent tts, but it is definitely worse than useless with festival on the otherwise excellent FC1.

Re:Why? They're only blind.

[ocelotbob]

Ah, but I can get a machine with SuSE preinstalled pretty easily as well. I can say to any competant system builder to throw it on and they will do it for me. However, preinstallation doesn't help when six months down the road, a failed update to the system requires you to install your original operating system. The blind SuSE user can install their OS and carry on like nothing happened, the blind OS X user has to rely on a sighted person to perform the reinstall.

Re:Why? They're only blind.

[waynelorentz]

Then score another one for OS X, and possibly Linux, too.

I used Windows from version 3 to XP Home, and finally made to the Mac last year. I've never had to reinstall the operating system. My wife has had her Mac for a few years and only installs the new operating systems once. She never has to re-install.

My experience with Winders was not so favorable. The best way to speed up a bogged down machine was to re-install. Sometimes I was re-installing every couple of months because of some driver quirk or some Windows setting that would get flipped with no way to go back.

Let's hope for the blind people that Linux is as reliable as OS X, and that they stay away from MS. Since the blind have a heightened sense of smell, that should come naturally.

Re:Why? They're only blind.

[Permission Denied]

If it doesn't work on the first go (for whatever reason) you are going to be doing a lot of prowling through less-than-helpful text, line at a time.

Try

make > /dev/null

or

make -s

If you do that, the only output you get is stderr:

ld: warning multiple definitions of symbol _deflate /usr/lib/libz.1.1.3.dylib(deflate.o) definition of _deflate /usr/lib/libz.dylib(deflate.o) definition of _deflate ld: warning multiple definitions of symbol _deflateCopy

which shows you what the problem is. More generally, unix tools are built to be quiet by default when things don't go wrong, and to separate errors from non-errors; compare:

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>nmake > nul

Microsoft (R) Program Maintenance Utility Version 6.00.8168.0
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corp 1988-1998. All rights reserved.

NMAKE : fatal error U1064: MAKEFILE not found and no target specified
Stop.

with:

% make
make: *** No targets specified and no makefile found. Stop.

Re:Why? They're only blind.

[slamb]

At least one kernel developer is blind, and I never found this out until we met in person.

How do blind peeople program? What tools do they use to read code? When I navigate through code, I skim a lot. I use a folding text editor and expand folds as I'm more interested in the details of a function. I get a feel for the structure by looking at the indentation, the lengths of functions, etc. I guess I could see conceptually that a tool could exist to help a blind person do the same thing by sound, but I'm having trouble imagining the specifics. Especially with languages like Python (where whitespace is significant), a straight-up reading of the text would not be sufficient for programming. You'd need help seeing the indentation of existing code and placing it properly for new code. I guess it could be as simple as saying "12 spaces" at the beginning of each line, but I'd think they'd have something better than that. I'm curious what it is.

More generally, I'm curious what better tools we could have for coding quickly. I was intrigued a while ago by a (I think) Microsoft Research project where they tried to create an IDE that showed things more visually and with richer symbols, as you'd see in the pseudocode in a lot of textbooks. One of the project leaders was asked about blind people, and he said that his tool was not intended for them at all (or even for color-blind people, I believe). He drew an analogy to fighter pilots, where good vision is just a prerequisite. He said that blind people were free to design their own development software tailored for sound. I wonder if he's right if we'll end up with some really specialized programming tools, tailored to both our senses and the programming languages we use.

Re:Why? They're only blind.

[kundor]

the part of os X that the grandparent was referring to -- the text console -- falls under foss.

sigh....pedants.

Re:Why? They're only blind.

[lunartik]

I once went to pick a girl up for a date and two of her mom's friends showed up to set up a computer for her. She needed a computer and they had an old one to give her. The guys showed up and both were completely blind. One was blind since birth I think, and the other was a police officer who had been shot in the face a couple of years prior. They hooked everything up and plugged in a box that read everything on the screen to them. Once or twice they asked one of the sighted people in the room to tell them what was going on on the screen, as it was faster and they wanted to confirm something was happening properly, but really it was an amazing thing to watch. They were laughing, joking around and enjoying setting up the system. Things like that can put things in perspective for you and make you think how small your complaints about life really are.

Re:Why? They're only blind.

[tepples]

Then where can I find the source code for Terminal.app?

Re:Why? They're only blind.

[kundor]

google.com

Re:Why? They're only blind.

[Anonymous Coward]

But why would a deaf person want to use a braile reader

I call BS

[thefatz]

wtf is a blind person going to care about window managers and enviroments?

"...Damn this new KDE 3 has some awsome icons, and the AA fonts...omg im going to cream. If only I could see them"

Re:I call BS

[ErichTheWebGuy]

wtf is a blind person going to care about window managers and enviroments? Um, the very premise of Free/Open Source Software is the very fact that you have a choice. He, and I, appreciate the fact that you can choose if you want to.

Flame, call it BS if you want. I don't really care.

Re:On Windows they cost up to $1,295

[PetWolverine]

Somebody has to pay for the development costs.

If you disagree, start an open source replacement.

Re:Forgive me if I sound cynical

[fr0dicus]

And that is a monopoly.

A monopoly is when a market is unbreachable due to the cost of entry being higher than is affordable due to the major player enjoying massive economies of scale, and being able to set the prices accordingly in order to maximise profits or keep competition at bay.

There will be absolutely no barrier to entry for Microsoft, KDE, Gnome, IBM, or whomever else care to develop a screen reader interface for the 97% of desktops out there that are not OS X compatible. There will also be no barrier to a skilled developer releasing a version for the Mac that is superior to Apple's own implementation. There are plenty of examples of non-free or more expensive solutions being preferred by consumers on the Mac: Appleworks is not exactly superfluous for example.

Did you ever consider that the monopolists here are the companies charging $1200 for their software? Maybe this will bring some competition into the market? Maybe you'll learn something, anything, about economics?

As for your final paragraph of trolling (and yes, this is almost the definition of trolling, passing off your opinion as some kind of truth), Apple systems may not be to your tastes but they are most certainly to mine, and many people I know. I'm forced to use Windows XP at work, along with the Solaris and AIX systems I develop. I also keep a Linux machine running KDE 3.2 on my desk with the excuse that it's easier to administer the systems that I have to support. All of these system pale in comparison to the flexibility and ease of use of Mac OS X, and the quality of the hardware (OK maybe not the IBM p670 in the corner ;-), which is why I flogged all of my x86 kit and bought three Macs for my home last year, and haven't looked back once.

Do you not think it a little contrary to accuse Apple of a monoplistic attitude in one sentence and then complain of their existence in the next? The REAL monopoly here is with Microsoft, who could EASILY implement a real screen reader interface for a fraction of a percent of their development budget and bundle it free with their OS to reach a userbase orders of magnitudes larger than Apple will (realistically) ever hope to reach.

Keep you pathetic trolling to yourself.

Re:On Windows they cost up to $1,295

[Anonymous Coward]

microsoft shouldn't include a free screen reader or else america or europe will take them to court just like the browser and media player

What is blind?

[thogard]

Most of us that can see well don't consider the real question of what is a blind person? It turns out that is more than people who can't see anything. It also includes people who can't see very well, people with issues involving clear vision except directly where they are looking, people that can't look at one spot for very long and people who's vision is just so poor that they can't a 144 point font a foot away. Many of the people that fit into the groups I've listed used to be able to see clearly. The were never taught brail and many of them are in their 60's or older and attempting to learn brail is very hard for them.

My mother just had her eyeballs sewed back together so once again she can see enough to read a screen (with the right magnifications) but that was a short term fix. In another decade she won't be able to see anything that isn't fuzzy.

Re:What is blind?

[Fear the Clam]

In another decade she won't be able to see anything that isn't fuzzy.

I'll start working on a 12-point caterpillar font.

White on black

[Biotech9]

Ctrl-alt-Command and 8 (if you have the help options on), will turn your display to reverse colour mode.

Re:White on black

[drdink]

In Panther, that first sets your display to grayscale and then inverts the colors. So, you lose all color and everything is inverted. What I'd really like to see is a feature where it only inverts "white-likeA" and "black-like" colors so I can still have a normally colored display with high contrast text. Or alternatively, add a "High Contrast" mode to Aqua. I know they really don't want to stray from their Holy Aqua Interface, but come on... there are people who *need* something different in order to use it properly.

Re:White on black

[TylerL82]

In Panther's Universal Access preference pane, there's an "Enhance Contrast" feature.

Re:White on black

[Jeremy Erwin]

Technically, that shortcut turns on both grayscale and invert modes. You can turn on "Invert Color" separately, but that inverts all the colors-- so that green becomes pink, orange becomes blue...

Re:White on black

[tepples]

What you seem to suggest, namely inverting luma while leaving chroma unchanged, is straightforward but requires a matrix multiplication for each color, potentially making blits slow.

Cheap shot

[Anonymous Coward]

On Windows they cost up to $1,295.

Yeah, and 486DXs with Linux on cost cost "up to" 50,000 dollars if you buy them from me.

Re:Cheap shot

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if you are really mocking the stated price, or just jesting, but that is really true. I've seen the catalogs(I'm not blind, but I know plenty blind people), that price is on the low end of the scale! They have a lot of neat gizmos, to help themselves go through life essentially unaided, but it's all hideously expensive. The program they're talking about I think is JAWS, the MOST popular program, and it's good but expensive. I don't know if this apple program will be that good at first, though. It takes a LOT of experience.

On a sidenote, one of the older text-to-speech programs (which actually had external hardware), had a lot of trouble with certain words.

Think business:

busy-ness

I don't know if apple will have problems like this, but I think they probably will

future poll?

[ubugly2]

this has me now wondering how many slashdot readers have disabilities and how they adapt to using the computer and what modifications they did,

Apple has had MS beat on this one

[Aqua OS X]

Ya, I'm with these guys. Apple has had MS beat on this one for at least 10 years. Macs have been able to read text and correspond Apple Script events to vocal commands for a very very long time.

Heck, even Mac OS's default "waist time at work" game supports vocal commands. Mac OS X comes with OpenGL Chess which you can command by calling pieces and locations. It's like being a crappie episode of Star Trek :)

KSayIt

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, this is just a conjecture, but he said he used KSayIt, which I presume is dependent on KDE, so that window manager choice was pretty important for him.

Re:KSayIt

[ErichTheWebGuy]

Again, as I said in reply to the last person, the very fact that you have a choice if a premise of Free/Open Source Software. I, and him, appreciate the fact that the choice can be made if we so choose.

So, flame me and call me a liar, etc. I don't really care. Enjoy.

Vitamin A...

[Anonymous Coward]

... and eat yer carrots!

Re:Vitamin A...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why?

My Mother

[captnitro]

My mother is blind. She had failed cataract surgery in 1996, and unfortunately, her and my brother have had a combined total of 13 surgeries. (Whereas I got off easy with one detached retina in 1989.)

We can muse all we want about how Linux needs a screenreader, but I don't care if Microsoft and SCO made a screenreader made out of DRM'd GPL source dipped in goatblood.

My mother needs something better than Zoomtext. She needs a screenreader. And all politics aside, I'll buy her a fucking iMac if she gets a free screenreader because of it. I love her more than politics.

Open source is not just about free-as-in-beer, it's not just about free-as-in-speech, it's about free-as-in-people. Too often as open source developers we think, "this is what's good for the GPL" or "this is what's good for a feature list," not "this is what's good for some guy's mother."

Thar's what opensource is about; not feature lists, not the efficiency of inetd, it's about users. We are their servants. May we serve them honorably, so they may have sight -- may we give them gifts, that we may be invisible.

Re:My Mother

[TwistedSquare]

Too often as open source developers we think, "this is what's good for the GPL" or "this is what's good for a feature list," not "this is what's good for some guy's mother."

Surely (and I'm not meaning you necessarily) we need a developer who says "this is what my mother needs, so I will code it myself". I have no idea how difficult coding this thing is, I'm just trying to say that developers for these products may often be someone for whom it is personally a need, rather than a developer for whom it is a feature that would be good in a Linux distro.

Re:My Mother

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I think this is one of the better cases where software agnosticism comes in handy.

No "holy war" and no single platform will fill everyone's needs. Very few geeks have the skill, motivation and the need to start and maintain such a project as F/OSS.

Re:My Mother

[Cynikal]

Quite right.

There seems to be some kind of twisted logic among companies who make any device or softwae for the dissabled that if you're deaf or blind, then you must be wealthy, right? everything i see that was made to make a person with dissablilities life better/easier costs an arm and a leg.

My girlfriend is deaf. My phone cost me $20 at walmart.. hers cost $500 (TTY).. we live in a security building with a buzzer entrance.. guess how she knows someone is at the door? she cant.. the system we'd need to install to alert her that someone is at the door is for the moment way out of our financial means. everything thats made for people with dissabilities is horribly expensive.

this isnt just about a screen reader for mac, i'd like to see some discussion about accessibility in general.. on the side of software.. i got this game once, its was an RTS, and my GF loved it, and we used to play it alot together.. but the problem is, whever she gets attacked, it would make a sound, she wouldnt hear it, and totally get her ass kicked in the game.. i wrote the company an email about it, citing these issues, suggested that it would be easy to put in their next patch some options for deaf players, to have a more visible on-screen visual alert rather than depending on audio alerts only.. got an auto reply about thanks for writing, that was it.. since then they've released 3 patches for the game, and to date, none of those features have been included. suffice to say, we no longer play the game anymore, she became too frustrated by haivng to rely on the sounds.

personally i feel when a software creater makes something with audio only alerts on anything, game or not, where you have to hear the sound to interact with the software properly, ok i can understand if they didnt think about it, its forgivable.. but when they're made aware of it, and fail to respond in anyway, (say to explain why they cant do this, or that they'd like to and will work on trying it) then they might as well just reply "im sorry sir, we dont want any your kind using our software, which is why we don't care about your concerns, now please move to the back of the bus"

thats just my take on it.

Re:My Mother

[Wateshay]

The problem is that by and large things tailored for the disabled are more expensive to design and manufacture than mass market items. There are also fewer people with disabilities than without. These two things unfortunately combine to mean that the things your girlfriend needs are going to be more expensive.

Think of it this way, if a product takes 10 developers (making $40K / year) six months to develop, then I have to make $400,000 before I can even think about making a profit. If 20,000 people want my product, that's $20 per unit minimum. Now, what if the product actually takes those developers a year to make, and there are only 2000 people who need the added features (and thus want to buy the product). By my calculations, that's $400 per unit to just break even, let alone make a profit. Although my numbers are of course scaled down, I think they illustrate the point well. I seriously doubt the manufacturers of your girlfriend's phone (or any of the other tools that help make her life easier) are making an abnormal profit just because they're marketing to the disabled.

As for the computer game, as nice as it would be for them to be able to add the features you would like, it may not be feasible. Just because the feature may seem like it would be simple, depending on the architecture of their code, it may in fact require a major overhaul. Also, what makes deafness special? Should they also add features to make the game easier to play for the blind? How about those with reduced motor skills? If they had to accomodate every need of every person who might potentially play their game, they'd probably end up bankrupt and nobody would get to play the game. I seriously doubt there is any malintent on their part. There may even be developers of the game who have deaf friends and relatives who they'd like to be able to play the game. That doesn't mean they have the resources to accomodate those desires.

Sorry if I sound a little bit ranting, but I have a small company, and we're just about to release a software product. All of us at the company would love it if that product accomodated the needs of disabled people who would like to use it. Unfortunately, it doesn't yet have those features. If we waited until we could implement them, the company would almost certainly not survive.

Re:My Mother

[WM_NCDESTROY]

I've thought about this quite a bit myself, as I have a chronic illness that requires me to have lots of expensive medical equipment and treatment. In many cases they overcharge because they know that charging less will not expand their market. People who need a special device for medical reasons really have no choice but to pay up. If you need it you need it. If they are lucky, insurance will pay for it. Also, for many devices gov't regulations have driven the prices up considerably as well as liability insurance and whatnot.

Also, most people don't like to think too much about sick or disabled people, so they don't take them into consideration when designing products. Think about all the resistance there was to the ADA when so many businesses had to put in wheelchair ramps and stuff. I've never heard so much moaning...

man don't get me started, i could go on a Huge rant. Suffice to say, it makes me happy to see a company doing something that will help some disabled people for a change, instead of taking advantage.

Re:My Mother

[zoloto]

A new meaning comes to the name "iMac" doesn't it?

Re:My Mother

[bryan1945]

Well, I won't go into why deafness is special compared to other disabilities, because I feel for everyone that has a disability, but in the terms that the parent was talking about, adding features for the deaf shouldn't be too hard. Too hard to add a visual indicator in additon to a aural indicator for a hit in a game? You already have collision detection for the incoming object, how hard can it be to add a line or 2 saying "When hit play audio, and show explosion pixel #3"?

I can't speak for your software product, so I'm sure that when you say it would be hard to implement disability features, I believe you. But I still agree that there is at least some price gouging in other disability projects- a phone that has a flasing strobe or LED on the phone to indicate an incoming call (just that, no TTY or other features) costs a bunch more than a similarly featured (minus flashing light) phone. I doubt that LED costs $40.

Anyway, I'm not trying to rip into you, I've just seen several (many maybe?) products that are slightly modified, where that modification would cost sometime cents to add to an entire line, cost way more than what should be reasonable. Maybe it's insurance coverage, maybe the companies can just get away with it. I have no agenda here- no diabled relatives or friends- but just trying to point out another angle.

(BTW- good luck on your company)

Re:On Windows they cost up to $1,295

[sffubs]

Isn't there a MS screen-reader bundled with Windows 2K and XP? Microsoft Narrator or something.

Not that I imagine it is up to scratch (compared to the ones that cost thousands), but it is "free".

This is useful for non-blind as well

[cerberusss]

For my job, I have to commute at least 2 hours every day, so I use Festival to convert text to wav, which I burn on a CD. That way, when I'm fed up with news or music, I put on the CD and 'listen' to this new article which I saw online but didn't have the time to read.

Any others who do this as well? Any tips for better software for this purpose than Festival? It's not too bad, but it's not terrific either.

Re:This is useful for non-blind as well

[Anonymous Coward]

In OS X you just use the say command and make it output to a file. Presto.

Alternatively you could buy an Amiga 500 and use the narrator device..

Re:This is useful for non-blind as well

[prog-guru]

In OS X you just use the say command and make it output to a file. Presto.

say is also available as source, and compiles fine on Linux.

Re:This is useful for non-blind as well

[mblase]

I put on the CD and 'listen' to this new article which I saw online but didn't have the time to read. Any others who do this as well?

A clever solution, but I imagine most people just use a printer.

Re:This is useful for non-blind as well

[tepples]

Read the output of a printer? Not while driving. Or did you not see "commute" in cerberusss' comment? No, the public bus does not go everywhere one needs to go.

Re:On Windows they cost up to $1,295

[Udo Schmitz]

most blind people can get assistance from organizations and the government for buying this sort of thing

But - at least in US - they won't get money for the comp. So if Apples screen reader comes for free, a Mac would be cheaper.

Yeah, maybe

[Udo Schmitz]

But I'm sure it has no CYMK support ...

(Oh, the good feeling to get modded -10 for an insider joke)

Reason for this

[andy666]

I read in Wired that Jobs has a blind family member, I forget who...

Keyboard accessibility problems.

[Pingster]

I do love many things about Mac OS X, but it's a terrible shame that its keyboard accessibility is so far behind that of Windows and Linux. I don't really understand how they could have gotten this so wrong.

Complete and convenient keyboard access is essential for vision-impaired users (and a great boon to fully sighted users who just want to get around more quickly). Unfortunately:

1. Full keyboard access isn't "full".

In some cases, even when full keyboard access is turned on, the blue border highlight never appears and pressing the Tab key does nothing. This causes parts of the user interface to be completely keyboard inaccessible. For example, if I start TextEdit, type in something, and press Command-W, a sheet drops down asking if I want to save the file before closing it. There are three buttons and the "Save" button is glowing, but there is no highlight, so it is impossible to select buttons using the keyboard. It is still possible to activate "Cancel" by pressing Escape, but "Don't Save" is completely unreachable.

There are also some controls that Tab never reaches, even if full keyboard access is enabled. For example, pressing Ctrl-F5 in Safari doesn't move the highlight to the toolbar. Pressing Tab never highlights the toolbar buttons, the bookmarks bar, or the tab bar. In the main iTunes window, pressing Tab cycles between the Source pane, the song listing, and the Search field. But when you first start iTunes, no song is selected, so the song listing is never highlighted; there is no way to tell that the song listing has the focus.

Keyboard access should be properly enabled in every window and sheet. Tab should navigate to all controls, and the border highlight should always be visible, even around list boxes.

2. Responding to prompts is tedious.

Prompt boxes usually present two or three buttons to choose from. The only universal way to operate these prompts from the keyboard is to press Tab several times and then press Enter. Not only does this require more keypresses, it also requires the user to watch for feedback because he must look for the highlight in order to predict which button will be activated. The user cannot simply hit a key and know in advance what will happen.

Buttons should be assigned accelerator keys by the operating system so that they can be activated by pressing a single letter (the first letter on the button, if possible). Pressing Command and the first letter of the button text sometimes works, but this seems to be a rare feature of particular prompts. Single-letter access should be enabled everywhere.

3. Access to menu commands is tedious.

Assume for a moment that you aren't yet totally familiar with an application and haven't memorized the Command shortcuts. The only way to access the menus from the keyboard is to press Fn-Ctrl-F2, a fairly arcane key combination, and then repeatedly press the arrow keys to get the desired menu. Then one can press the Up and Down arrows to choose a command. Although commands can be selected from menus by pressing letters, the association between letters and commands is strange and hard to predict. For example, in Safari's File menu, pressing C activates "Close Tab" (why not "Close Window"?), pressing D activates "New Tab", and pressing W activates "Save As...". In the Apple menu, pressing S once activates "Shut Down..." (why not "Software Update..." or "Sleep"?) and pressing S again activates "System Preferences...". This doesn't make any sense.

Windows users can simply press Alt-F-P to print. But Mac users have to press Fn-Ctrl-F2, Right, Right, Down, Down, Down, Down, Down, Down, Down, Down, Down, Enter. Or, if they are clever, they can press Fn-Ctrl-F2, Right, Right, P, R, Enter. This is tedious, but the more severe problem is that the Mac key combination is not fixed. If the menu changes (by inserting, removing, enabling, or disabling items), the number of times to press the arrow keys can change, and the number of letters one has to type to be certain of se

Re:Keyboard accessibility problems.

[Anonymous Coward]

CMD+First letter of dialog word

Re:Keyboard accessibility problems.

[Pingster]

That only works in some dialog boxes. It would be nice if it worked everywhere.

Command+letter can't be the rule for all sheets, since sheets only grab window focus, not application focus. If sheet buttons took over Command+letter combinations, you wouldn't be able to use Command+letter shortcuts to talk to the application. For example, in a browser window, a password prompt might drop down as a sheet, but i wouldn't want a button starting with "W" to prevent me from pressing Command+W to close the window.

Pressing the letter alone, for any dialog boxes that have only buttons, is probably a better solution.

Re:Keyboard accessibility problems.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's painfully obvious from your post that you don't actually trying navigating with the keyboard very much.

Re: Keyboard accessibility problems.

[Pingster]

Really, I would love to be proved wrong. I just want a fast way of getting around with the keyboard, and keyboard operations don't behave in ways that are obvious and convenient to me.

Are there better ways to get at the menus, for instance? Is there a way to operate dialog buttons that works consistently in all dialogs? If I'm missing something, I do want to know.

Thanks in advance.

Re: Keyboard accessibility problems.

[Trillan]

Sure. You can set any keyboard command you want to open the menus, and you just start typing the menu command. I used to use ctrl-m. I agree the dialog buttons are a little inconsistent in some apps, but in most coommand+first letter will do it.

(Sorry for posting anon the first time, but I thought I was responding to a troll... :)

Re:Keyboard accessibility problems.

[Fluk3]

In OS X I hit command-p, which gives me the print dialogue, then I hit return to print.

To save I hit command-s to get the save dialogue and hit return to save.

Return is the key you are looking for to activate the glowing button on a sheet.

Not so impossible.

Re:Keyboard accessibility problems.

[MoneyT]

With the exception of your password box again. If you just press the letter to run the controls, and one of the options is
"OK" how do you type the password omoikane?

Re:Keyboard accessibility problems.

[Anonymous Coward]

The "Don't Save" you're looking for is command-d.

Actually you can go a long way toward learning the most common subset of these keyboard commands by considering Mac's "command" key (the one with the apple on it) equivalent to Windows's "control" key. In Windows control-p prints; on a Mac command-p prints, etc.

Re:Keyboard accessibility problems.

[RestiffBard]

you print by going to the file menu? I just hit command-p.

Re:Keyboard accessibility problems.

[Anonymous Coward]

by the way.. you are simply wrong

if you turn on full keyboard access in the system prefs pane you can do what you described in TextEdit.

my keystrokes:

cmd-tab -> TextEdit
cmd-n
[type some garbage]
cmd-w
[tab to the dont save box]
space

tada!

Re:Keyboard accessibility problems.

[Pingster]

I'm telling you, there is a bug. I've already turned on full keyboard access. When you see the prompt sheet, you get a highlight that you can move to different buttons by pressing Tab. I don't.

That's my point: sometimes it's there, sometimes it isn't.

Re:Keyboard accessibility problems.

[Pingster]

I said pressing the letter alone was a better solution for any dialog boxes that have only buttons.

Re: Keyboard accessibility problems.

[Pingster]

I think you missed my point. I said "assume you haven't memorized the shortcuts yet".

The nice thing about pull-down menus is that you can explore them to find out what you can do. Of course Print happens to have a standard shortcut across most applications. But menu commands don't always all have shortcut keys, and you can't expect users to memorize all the shortcut keys for every application.

Using single-letter accelerators to open menus and activate pull-down menu items is a nice universal way to get to all menu commands regardless of what shortcut keys the user has memorized. Windows applications let you activate any menu command just with Alt and a few letters (almost always two), and it would be nice if it were that easy on the Mac as well.

Re:Keyboard accessibility problems.

[Pingster]

I think you missed a couple of things i wrote in the original comment. I said "assume you haven't memorized the shortcuts yet". Not all menu commands have shortcut keys, and you can't expect users to have all the shortcut keys memorized. The issue is how you get around a new application to all the menu commands when you haven't memorized them yet.

Look at the "Repeat One" command in iTunes, for instance. There's no shortcut for that one. In a Windows environment, you could get there by pressing Alt, C, R, R. On a Mac it's a lot harder.

Return is the key you are looking for to activate the glowing button on a sheet.

I know. I said that in the original post. The point i was trying to make is that sometimes the highlight doesn't appear and Tab doesn't select anything.

Re: Keyboard accessibility problems.

[RestiffBard]

understood. command-z is one that does take a little while to learn in your head.

Re:Keyboard accessibility problems.

[andreMA]

Perhaps an issue with versions? It works for me with:

OS X 10.3.3
TextEdit: 1.3 (v202)

Re:Keyboard accessibility problems.

[Pingster]

Strange... i am also using OS X 10.3.3 and TextEdit 1.3 (v202). I don't know what triggers this problem; it appears to be intermittent. But it definitely happens; i just tested it and sure enough there is no blue focus border.

Someone else mentioned that you can hit Command-D to activate "Don't Save", which does work even when there's no blue focus border. Not very consistent though.

I just came across another instance of this problem, and it's worse: if you try to quit TextEdit when you have multiple windows with edited material, you get a pop-up prompt: "You have 2 documents with unsaved changes. Do you want to review these changes before quitting?" In this prompt window, neither Tab nor Command-D works.

Re:Keyboard accessibility problems.

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried all of your scenarios, and in each one TAB worked perfectly in 10.3.3.

Yes, Windows Narrator

[lseltzer]

It's insane, but not surprising, that nobody else on /. knows about this program.

Here's a quote from one page on Narrator:

• "Narrator is a text-to-speech utility for users who are blind or have impaired vision. Narrator reads what is displayed on your screen: the contents of the active window, menu options, or the text you have typed.
• 
  
  Narrator is designed to work with Notepad, Wordpad, Control Panel programs, Internet Explorer, the Windows desktop, and Windows setup. Narrator may not read words aloud correctly in other programs."

I'm almost positive there's also an API if you want to make your own programs explicitly compatible with Narrator, which I believe has been around since at least Win98.

Re:Yes, Windows Narrator

[lseltzer]

Better yet, here's a review of Windows XP on the web site of the American Foundation for the Blind.

It puts a proper perspective on Narrator: "Narrator is a basic screen reader that provides speech output for blind computer users. It is not intended to replace more powerful commercially available screen readers. Rather, it is intended to help you when your normal adaptive equipment is not available. "

Do we know that the Mac reader is any more than this?

Re:Yes, Windows Narrator

[Have Blue]

Apple seems to have picked up an interesting strategy over the past few years, regarding features they think "ought to be" on the Mac. They'll wait a short time to give a third party developer a chance to supply that application, but if they don't, or Apple is unsatisfied with the result, they'll move in and release their own version for free. Sometimes this strategy succeeds (Safari, this screen reader) and sometimes it doesn't (the Sherlock/Watson mess). While this is not all that far from Microsoft's much-hated "bundling" tricks, at least it should be better than the accessibility features of 10.3

Re:DubuDubuDubuDubu.... It's Wide!

[Anonymous Coward]

Name
Xzzy [ Log Out ]

Hi Xzzy!

Re:Forgive me if I sound cynical

[eraserewind]

Microsoft has a monopoly in Intel based Hardware. MacOS X has a monopoly on Apple Hardware. If you produce an application for the Mac and Apple decides to ship a competing product pre-installed then you are just as dead as if Microsoft had done the same.

screenshots

[sirius_bbr]

So... where are the screenshots?!

(Sorry, couldn't resist)

Re:FUD. -- Ctrl Alt+ and Ctrl Alt- scr res

[Anonymous Coward]

I have found that on Linux, depending on the desktop manager (gnome, kde, etc), you can use Ctrl Alt + and Ctrl Alt - to change the resolution of the screen, then the existing desktop becomes scrollable with the mouse.

Re:Forgive me if I sound cynical

[Anonymous Coward]

"In as much it might lock some people into apple's platform, I do not see how that would hinder competition in this market. If there is a better, lower cost solution people will migrate to it."

Yes, as I understand it Apple are only doing this because the only commercial solution that supported the Mac OS decided NOT to port their app to OSX. To qualify for gov't contracts Apple has to jump through some equal opps hoops sooooo they HAD to build their own screenreader.

hmmmm

[ShadowRage]

how about open minded software products for blind mac users ;P ...ok, I'll shut up and go back to sitting in the corner now.

Re:Forgive me if I sound cynical

[xenoandroid]

Apple (MacOS X makers) can't have a monopoly on Apple Hardware because they're both made by the same company. That's like me saying Samsung has a monopoly on samsung cell-phones because they make the OS that runs on it. Would you want to buy an OS-less cell-phone? I doubt anybody want's to buy an OS-less Mac unless they were planning to install Linux on it in the first place.

Truth about Linux Screen Readers

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Linux has had good support for hardware screen readers from the command line for a long time. Linux can even be installed through a screen reader. Check out the speakup kernels. The BIOS is the only problem. Emacspeak is used by many people who work in a CLI world. Quite useable.
2. Linux has not had good support for screen readers in the GUI. Gnome and KDE have been working on adding the plumbing, with Gnome being more advanced. Many applications are lacking the polish to be used by screen readers.
3. Gnopernicus looks to be the screen reader to use, but until recently, was not easy to get or install. Most distributions consider it experimental. I think it works ok, except that many applications are still not 100% ready.
4. To get government contracts, accessibilty issues must be solved.

Re:On Windows they cost up to $1,295

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it's not the same service.

Your argument can be expanded to: why should people on Rigel 7 pay more postage to send a letter to Earth, than people living there?

Re:On Windows they cost up to $1,295

[Anonymous Coward]

That is just stupid.

There are many people in this world that live their entire lives without touching a computer. If someone chooses to use a computer, they can pay for those things they need to operate it.

What about keyboards and mice for people with Carpal Tunnel and RSI? Have you priced those? They cost more.

I need glasses to see clearly. Do you know who pays for them?

Life isn't fair, get over it.

Archos MP3 Player

[elinenbe]

The Rockbox software (http://rockbox.haxx.se)

has incorporated some nifty things that the company, Archos seemed to have left out such as a menu system screen reader!

There are "voice fonts" where the entire menu system is read back to you. There are a decent number of blind rockbox users, and this makes it the only mp3 player they can use. Ever see a blind person use an ipod? This customization alone is something that most blind people would pay upwards of 10-20x the cost of a device to be implemented!

And with Amazon selling the 20GB USB2.0 recorders for $79 after a rebate I don't know where you can get a better deal! (no, this is not an ad, I am just a rockbox developer)

Re:Archos MP3 Player

[ZackSchil]

You'd think that blind people would rather not use an MP3 player with headphones.. well... because that would be like blindfolding a deaf person. When someone lacks one of the two essential senses, the other becomes absolutely crucial for living a normal life. A blind person with an MP3 player seems a bit dangerous to me. On the other hand, I'm sure blind people still have a great appreciation for music and enjoy listening to it over speakers, in which case portability isn't much of an issue and something like a braile laptop might be better suited to their MP3 playback needs.

That said, handicap accesable products are a good thing, but from a practicallity standpoint, let's think before we create something dangerous or impractical, like a braile spedometer in a car.

O'Reilly on existing Speech in MacOSX

[Etcetera]

I'm surprised no one's posted a link to this yet... O'Reilly's Mac Dev Center has a nice article on "the often misunderstood world of talking to your Mac" that goes over the existing speech (and speech recognition) interface.

A good overview of past and present, with a little bit of technical information there for AppleScripters too.

Re:Forgive me if I sound cynical

[Anonymous Coward]

true dat

I guess you never of command-P?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Mac users have to press Fn-Ctrl-F2, Right, Right, Down, Down, Down, Down, Down, Down, Down, Down, Down, Enter."

Bzzzt. Wrong answer. It's just command-P.

Re: I guess you never of command-P?

[Pingster]

Please read my post more carefully. I'm talking about a universal way to get to all the menu commands when you haven't memorized all the shortcuts.

All right, so "Print" was an inappropriate example because it has a standard shortcut in every application, which is good. But not all menu commands have shortcuts, let alone standard ones, and users can't be expected to memorize them all.

Many applications have menu commands with no shortcuts, like the "Repeat One" command i mentioned in the original post. It shouldn't take 5 to 10 keypresses to get there. As far as i can tell, selecting "Repeat One" requires at least 8 keypresses if you are willing to enter an unpredictable sequence, or 14 keypresses for a predictable sequence. (By "predictable" i mean it doesn't depend on knowing everything else in the menu.) It ought to take just 2 or 3 predictable keypresses.

Re: Deaf/Blind Computer Users

[whowhatwhere]

It all depends on how deaf and how blind you are! I think that the first misconception is to assume that users are both totally deaf and totally blind! (I will add my $0.02 Canadian here saying I am dating a deaf/blind woman who knows all about this stuff and teaches others to use it). A user with some usuable vision may use a screen magnifier, larger fonts, more contrast. A user with some usable hearing (with a hearing aid or cochlear implant) may turn up the sound on the screen reader, make the screenreader speak more slowly and so on.

Screen readers for Windows, such as Window Eyes or Jaws will also send the output to a "Braille Display". Instead of using mouse clicks, the software has keyboard shortcuts for various functions i.e. tab to the next link, press enter to follow it and so on.

Re:Forgive me if I sound cynical

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahahaha....and Ford has a monopoly on Ford cars. Imagine that.

Hahaha

[Anonymous Coward]

I love it when retards do that. Not so Anonymous anymore, are we Mr. Coward?

Keyboard navigation?

[jfengel]

There's more to operating a computer blind than just having a screen reader. Reading a web page is the easy part; if you have to see an icon and point a mouse at it, you can't even open the browser.

It needs to be operated either solely by keyboard, or have special modifications to support a force-feedback mouse.

The Macintosh has always supported accelerators, but when I last looked I couldn't find any way to access non-accelerated menu items without a mouse. Windows has supported mouseless operation from the beginning (not out of compassion for the blind, but because Windows 1.0 couldn't assume that you even owned a mouse.)

I'm a huge fan of the section 508 guidelines. Even non-disabled users can benefit from a display which is clear enough to be used by blind users. It forces the developer to think out a bit further ahead, but the end-user gains.

Re:Keyboard navigation?

[JohnsonWax]

OS X supports full keyboard navigation so you can reach all menu items, screen elements with the keyboard.

OS X also supports UI scripting, so in Applescript you can specify to click a specific button, select a specific menu, etc. to automate specific tasks.

Re:Keyboard navigation?

[Lars T.]

Complete keyboard navigation and control
To drive the spoken interface, you'll use the keyboard instead of the mouse. You can choose any combination of keyboard commands and shortcuts you prefer and can even take advantage of Apple's full keyboard access option. Full keyboard access extends your ability to navigate to items such as the Dock, menu bar, window tool bars, and palettes. The spoken interface can also be directed using a new feature called the viewfinder, a powerful tool that lets you control what is spoken, and enables you to interact with items on the screen using only your keyboard. You can press buttons, drag sliders, enable and disable check boxes, select radio buttons, drag, scroll bars, and many other on-screen controls.

Re:Keyboard navigation?

[Krioni]

but when I last looked I couldn't find any way to access non-accelerated menu items without a mouse

I guess you didn't look very hard (or perhaps not recently enough, as you did admit was possible). Try looking at the Universal Access panel in System Preferences, and activate "Enable input for Assistive Devices." Also check out the Keyboard Shortcuts panel, which allows you to completely access the menubar and buttons/popups/other widgets using only the keyboard. This was added as beta software last spring, and is built-in to 10.3. In this way, you can access any menu item, whether it has a pre-defined shortcuts or not. You can also assign custom shortcuts for menu items you would like very fast access to. Admittedly, Apple didn't put a great interface on how to assign custom shortcuts, but the navigation is fairly easy: press control-F1 to activate (only needed to turn it on - not needed each time). Then you press control-F2 to highlight the menubar, and can use arrows to move to menus, then type the first few letters (or just one, if unique) of the item you want.

Re:Keyboard navigation?

[jfengel]

That sounds slightly more cumbersome than the Windows standard, which is that ALT-letter always takes you to the menu beginning with that letter (and with some disambiguation rules). I use this all the time: I get to Slashdot with ALT-B s (Bookmarks->Slashdot). It's an incredibly concise gesture.

I'm a Java programmer; the standard Java Look and Feel also uses the same approach.

OS X does seem to have dialogue-box navigation enabled by default, which is an excellent start. It can be tricky to get right: you have to make sure that labels are properly associated with fields, or the fields are useless in a screen reader. And a bunch of other small but crucial considerations. I hope that the standard tools that you use to build a dialogue box on OS X support that sort of thing, and that the screen reader ties into it. (Somebody posted a reply to my original text that implies that it does.)

Even then, it's still a pain. I try to use keyboard navigation in web pages, but the usual link order means that I have to go through dozens or hundreds of links in the left and top nav bars before I can follow the link in, say, a Slashdot story. I'm a sighted user, but I always keep the idea of a headless terminal in mind, if for no other reason than that it means I don't have to take my fingers off the home row. (I don't even like using the arrow keys.)

News to iPod

[JohnsonWax]

There are a number of utils for converting RSS from apps like NetNewsWire to MP3 playlists and stuffing it on your iPod. One such app:

http://www.tow.com/software/read_it_to_me/

Basically, use NNW to manage the news you want (TONS of sources - BBC, CNN, weblogs, etc. but not all include the full article text) and a click or two will take all your unviewed feeds, text-to-speech them to MP3 and sync them to your iPod.

You can later just click through the ones you heard (or everything from the day), and the next day it'll only sync across the new content.

Lots of options on OS X, but not sure about Windows + iPod.

Spend some time to learn the interface.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you had spent a bare minimum of time to learn keyboard shortcuts on a Mac you wouldn't need to post your FUD.

Cmd (apple key) + S saves in every Mac program
Cmd + W closes the window (Or tab in Safari) in every program (Not alt+f4 or ctrl+w or ctrl+x like in Windows, talk about unpredictability)
Cmd + Q quits every Mac program
Select all, Cut, copy, paste, undo, redo, save as, new are the same in every Mac program.
Escape is an universal "cancel" key.

Don't forget that with 10.3 you can make your own keyboard shortcuts for most menu items in most script frindly programs.

Re: Spend some time to learn the interface.

[Pingster]

Calm down a minute and look more carefully at what i'm saying. I'm sorry if i wasn't clear enough.

I recognize that there are standard shortcuts for commands common to most applications, such as the ones you mentioned (Save, Print, Close). I agree that this is a great thing.

Here's my point: there should be a convenient and predictable way to get to everything in the menus.

Not everything has a shortcut. And many shortcuts are application-specific; i don't think it's reasonable to expect users to have them all memorized.

Even some standard commands don't have standard shortcuts, like Zoom, for instance. The only obvious way to get to Zoom is to hit Fn-Ctrl-F2, hit the arrow buttons a few times to get to the Window menu, and then hit down twice or hit Z. Presumably this is because the Apple developers decided that they wanted to reserve Command-Z for Undo and didn't think Zoom was important enough to deserve a specialized shortcut key. That's cool; the space of available shortcut keys is limited and the space of human memory is limited, so applications shouldn't be obligated to assign shortcuts to everything. That means you're going to need a reasonably convenient way to deal with the rest of the menu commands.

It would greatly improve keyboard accessibility if there were a standard way to get to all the menu commands in just a couple of keypresses. Windows can do this (Alt, first letter of menu, first letter of command in most cases). That doesn't make Windows better as a whole; it's just one particular thing that Windows does better, and that would make Mac OS X accessibility better as well.

OH NO!

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

Imagine a blind person trying to use vi !?! Oh the humanity!

"COLON Q EXCLAMATION ENTER, MOTHER FUCKER! SAVE! SAVE!"

Mod this guy up as "lacks sense of humor"

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello!

Re:Forgive me if I sound cynical

[cooldev]

The REAL monopoly here is with Microsoft, who could EASILY implement a real screen reader interface for a fraction of a percent of their development budget and bundle it free with their OS to reach a userbase orders of magnitudes larger than Apple will (realistically) ever hope to reach.

And then get sued (and criticized on /.) for bundling yet another program which competes with 3rd party vendors.

Not that it's a bad idea, of course, and Narrator should certainly be improved, but currently Microsoft puts their effort into creating the platform pieces (MSAA and related technologies) and leaves development of the end-user products to ISVs. This isn't all bad, as ISVs can leverage the interfaces to build accessibility tools tailored to different types/levels of disabilities as well as support for specialized hardware.

The fact that the software (and virtually everything else for people with disabilities) is expensive simply reflects the lower volume of demand.

Rest assured that if there weren't already several good 3rd party screen readers for Windows, Microsoft would build one in a heartbeat.

Web Developers

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally, OS X web developers can see how accessible their sites really are for free! A more accessible web benefits us all.

Today screenreaders, tomorrow speech-based PCs?

[holizz]

(and Macs, etc - but I couldn't fit it in the title ;)

Would be great for people who have to drive a lot who don't get chance to read their favourite geek blog.
Or has it already been done? I'd certainly buy a laptop if I could use it while driving, in a non-dangerous way.

Geez...your so stupid

[MacFury]

There aren't any games for the Mac!!!! Why would a blind person buy one??

dummy...

Re:Geez...your so stupid

[zackeller]

The blind are at a slight disadvantage at most video games... though it would explain some of the people online in UT2004.

Why "mouse keys" suck

[tepples]

"Mouse keys," that is, keyboard commands to move the mouse pointer pixel by pixel, are guaranteed to be slower than keyboard commands bound directly to an application's commands. In addition, "mouse keys" are still based on a sighted person's model of the desktop metaphor.

Windows has a free one

[PickyH3D]

So why wasn't that mentioned? Oh ya, bias.

Re:On Windows they cost up to $1,295

[Morky]

It's funny that you say that less demand means higher prices in a free market, because that is probably true only in software. Basic microeconomic theory says that prices go up as demand goes up, but in software it's exactly the opposite because all the cost is in development, not manufacturing.

Windows has them for free...

[ClubStew]

On Windows they cost up to $1,295.

Windows has had a screen reader as part of the OS since around Win98SE and Win2K, part of their accessibility suite of utilities. Anyone paying that kind of money is moron.

Re:Windows has them for free...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, you are SO wrong it is not even funny. Don't you at all think that JUST maybe, there is a blind person out there, who is not a moron, that knows about this, and doesn't use it because it SUCKS?
I know several blind people, mainly they're good friends or acquaintances, none of them are morons, nor are they completely tech-illiterate. One blind person I know is married to a computer programmer(Delphi), yet her husband must never have pointed this out to her after his years of computer use, since she, stupidly, still uses JAWS! How sad. I guess all of those blind people who use screenreaders other than that piece of junk must be stupid. I'm sure with your incredible credentials you are right.

Re:Windows has them for free...

[contenunu]

Because the Narrator isn't a screen reader. Has nothing to do with "bias."

Re:Windows has them for free...

[Anonymous Coward]

You probably don't have a very deep understanding of access issue for people with visual disabilities. The built-in "screen reader" in windows does not have any of the rich functionality of the commercial windows products. Try browsing the web with your monitor off and mouse disconnected using the text to speech functions built into windows.

I applaud Apple's effort, just as I applaude the work that JAWS, GW Micro, and others have done to make windows screen readers. The technology is very important, and Apple building the functionality into the OS is an extremely interesting development...I saw the technology preview at the CSUN conference on technology and disability and it looks like it will be a truly compelling addition to the OS.

Built-in accessibility features are great, but few have gone as far as it looks the Apple screen reader may go...we'll see.

Don't be so quick to assume people are "morons."

LOL

[glenalec]

> it would also probably help to spell "intellectual" and "denigrate" correctly.

It would probably help if people didn't think slagging off others' inability to spell didn't drag their own arguments to several levels lower than the people who's spelling inability they are trying to use to distract from the argument.

Also help if peoiple joined the Simplified Spelling Society and tried to get English removed from the status of the only modern language that does not regularly have its spelling updated to reflect current verbal usage. Being proud of being able to spell English in its current written form is tantamount to being proud of ignorance (something else rather prevalent in certain parts of the English-speaking world).

Finally, see my Bio.

Re:LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, off-topic, but I'll bite. I'm curious, since you claim English spellings are regularly updated, was there a time when "intelectual" and "denegrate" were considered correct spelling? It would seem from your last sentence that you consider yourself above the unwashed masses who use English, but I'd argue that your statement shows more pride of ignorance than correct spelling would.

Re:LOL

[glenalec]

Ah, English is NOT systematically updated like French, German, Chinese to name three recent ones off the top of my head. That is the problem. Oral pronunciation in any language moves on and leaves the spelling long behind if there isn't a proactive effort to keep spellings current. In English, there is no reliable corelation between spelling and pronounciation, hence the problems the majority of people have with spelling. Yes majority. Hell, By age 8, English speakers are academically two years behind age-mates in comparable non-English-speaking countries because it takes that much longer just to be able to learn to read the system (if they ever do - that two years is an average, not a norm). Anyone trying to claim current English spelling is anything but a bad joke on the people who are expected to use it, is talking from somewhere nowhere near their mouth.

Re: Intelectual: Next time you want to complain about bloated software, remember the redundant letters you insist on.

Re: Denegrate: How many ways can you find of spelling the same short-e (or short-i if your accent is different to mine) phoneme? (Clue - you can't use your fingers as you don't have enough).

Oh, I wasn't criticising people who are proud of being able to spell English correctly - an ability to memorise insanely long lists of largely arbitary letter combinations is a memory skill to be rightly proud of (though I'm sure the same neurons could be put to better use if they didn't have to be used thuswise). Just people who think the actual SYSTEM in English is something to be proud of.

Re:LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

So your solution to confusing spelling is to change the spelling every so often? Bravo. That'll make it MUCH easier for everyone to remember. "Hmm, is it 'weird' or 'wierd' or 'weerd' this year? I can't remember..."

Oh, and etter bloat? I'm not even going to justify that one.

Just because you can't spell doesn't mean the entire language needs to be overhauled. Yes, languages do evolve. However your seeming refusal to learn and use accepted spelling smacks of either laziness or contrariness. If you put half the time and energy into learning how to use the language properly instead of railing against it as you apparently do, this wouldn't even be an issue.

Re:LOL

[glenalec]

No but if the MAJORITY of people have trouble with the current system, then there are obviously problems. And English spellings ARE regularly revised year to year - just not consistently (note 'thru' is now in most major dictionaries as a legitimate alternative spelling - and not an addition for the better, IMO). The problem is - as you just pointed out - that there is no standard relationship between a text character (or set) and a particular phoneme. If there was only one way to spell 'ee' there would only be one way to spell 'weird' (I almost spelt it 'wierd' but my new in-line spell checker assures me it is one of those annoying dozen-odd exceptions to the i before e except after c rule).

I'm not sure what part of the world you come from, so I don't know how I should spell colour/color for you. Or the ...ise/ize words. The US was - a century or so ago - very pro-reform, but have since become the most reform-reactionary nation. If you are a US citizen arguing this, I certainly hope you are also pushing for a return to 'standard' British spellings as used in all non-US countries other than possibly Canada which I'm not sure on!! (BTW: I prefer the US spellings as they ARE generally more logical).

The Simplified Spelling Society's "Cut Spelling" system removes about 90% of spelling silliness without seriously affecting legibility to 'old school' readers by standardising (since I'm not a US citizen, I'll use the British-English spelling) this sort of thing. It is one of many proposed options. Not my favorite, but probably the most realistic of all I have seen.

English spelling causes serious problems for both native and second-language users, which is a pity, because English is also an inclusive, and powerful language with a relatively clean (and improving) grammar. It is a good language for the most part. But the status-quo exclusivity club are more interested in false traditions and making it as hard as possible for others to join them on top of the language order as possible.

If you have - through hard work and good fortune to have a particular cognitive skill set conducive to being able to spell - fought your way to the top of the spelling food chain, good for you. But people who try to use that fact to lord it over those who haven't must be struggling to find any other reason to justify their sense of self-superiority.

Anyway, my problem with the post that started all this was mainly that the poster had some quite good come-backs to my post, then wrecked my respect for his/her whole argument by finishing off with a spelling cheap-shot.

If pointing out a few spelling errors is the best come back someone can give, why bother? And the poster actually had some decent responses anyway, so was it really necessary to cheapen the response like that? It's a bit like finishing a list of argument points with "and your mother is ugly." It may or may not be true, but either way it is entirely irrelevant to the argument.

And to finish off by dragging this post kicking and screaming back towards the topic (hey, *I* wasn't the one who STARTED talking about spelling ;-), having a consistent relationship between characters and pronunciation would make TTS programming much simpler.

Linux can do that

[notsoclever]

Ctrl-alt-+ and - (the + and - keys on the number pad), assuming your X server is configured with multiple resolutions (which it usually is, at least in all of the distributions I've ever used).