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Apple to Add Free Screen Reader to Mac OS X

Posted by pudge on from the accessibility-good dept.

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."

4 of 284 comments (clear)

  1. Macs for the blind by zackeller · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  2. Unlikely to happen by Canberra+Bob · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  3. Why? They're only blind. by glenalec · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?)

    --
    The man with no surname and a silly hat

    On the universe: It's bunk.
  4. My Mother by captnitro · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.