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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."
This is a call to all able programmers.
Grab a Jolt or a coffee and get cracking on an even freer Linux screen reader!
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?
**FREE** Track and view your phone's via CellID and/or WIFI and/or GPS
The story mentions people who are different from most others. The trolls will feast today.
Hurrah for Apple.
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.
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.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
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.
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.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
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.
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
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Checkout Gnpernicus. Free screenreader for GNOME and GNOME compatible desktops.
found here
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.
Beware, Nugget is watching... See?
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.
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...
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.
Beware, Nugget is watching... See?
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!
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.
WTF?
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.
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.
Beware, Nugget is watching... See?
Ok, to become a betatester, do I have to poke my eyes out ??
This is the sig that says NI (again)
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.
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.
Beware, Nugget is watching... See?
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.
Indefinitely Detained US Citizen
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...)
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.
bash: rtfm: command not found
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??
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
You don't need a special version, you add accessibility features to your application.
r l= /library/en-us/msaa/msaastart_9w2t.asp
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?u
MSDOS: 20+ years without remote hole in the default install
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.
Beware, Nugget is watching... See?
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?
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.
"Why do you consent to live in ignorance and fear?" - Bad Religion
Anyway, I am applying for trademark registration of the word "blind."!!!?
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).
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.
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
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!
Macromedia has an entire section in Flash MX 2004's help about making accessible applications.
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).
Brought to you by MS
Indefinitely Detained US Citizen
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.
Unlike Microsoft, Apple is not a convicted monopolist. The rules change when you break them.
I found the meaning of life the other day, but I had write-only access.
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.
Beware, Nugget is watching... See?
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.
Somebody has to pay for the development costs.
If you disagree, start an open source replacement.
I found the meaning of life the other day, but I had write-only access.
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.
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!
stuff
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.
Ctrl-alt-Command and 8 (if you have the help options on), will turn your display to reverse colour mode.
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.
Yeah, and 486DXs with Linux on cost cost "up to" 50,000 dollars if you buy them from me.
this has me now wondering how many slashdot readers have disabilities and how they adapt to using the computer and what modifications they did,
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
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
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.
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".
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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.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
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.
(Oh, the good feeling to get modded -10 for an insider joke)
I read in Wired that Jobs has a blind family member, I forget who...
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
Here's a quote from one page on Narrator:
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.
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.
bash: rtfm: command not found
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.
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.
bash: rtfm: command not found
So... where are the screenshots?!
(Sorry, couldn't resist)
this sig has intentionally been left blank
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.Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
You have two options:
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
-eric
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.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
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.
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.
Laugh while you can, monkey-boy!
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.
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.
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.
"COLON Q EXCLAMATION ENTER, MOTHER FUCKER! SAVE! SAVE!"
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.
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".
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.
(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.
"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.
The blind are at a slight disadvantage at most video games... though it would explain some of the people online in UT2004.
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...
Beware, Nugget is watching... See?
So why wasn't that mentioned? Oh ya, bias.
Dude, Apple had text to speech in the OS in System 1 in 1984. I personally remember playing with it in 1985.
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 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.
> 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.
The man with no surname and a silly hat
On the universe: It's bunk.
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.
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.
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).
There are 10 kinds of people: ones who understand ternary, ones who don't, and ones who think this joke is about binary
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.