New Technology for the Blind?

Recently, quite a few questions surrounding technology for the visually impared have dropped into the Ask Slashdot in-box and I'd like to take the time to share these questions with you. Please read on for more. Gaming Accessibility Recommendations? openSoar asks: "I work for a company that makes and runs a virtual online world called SecondLife. One of the most inspirational stories I've heard recently has been about a group of people with extreme physical challenges and limitations who are using our software to great effect including (to quote from the original forum post) - 'the chance to be on an equal playing field for once, to not have to have folks get past what they look or sound like... to be warmly received... to play and have fun the way their peers do.' - I want to make things even better and provide a broad range of accessibility features and options. Time constraints mean I can't tackle everything so I'm trying to hit the really useful ones first. Of course, we're going to ask the users what they think but I figured that the folk here would also have some great ideas and suggestions." Blind Friendly Open Source Software? scubacuda asks: "A friend of mine is blind, yet he effortlessly navigates through his Windows XP box (installing programs, buying stuff on eBay, reading web-pages, etc) using JAWS. When I asked him what open source resources were available for him, I was surprised to hear him say, 'Almost nothing.' Is this true? Are we just not looking at the right places, or do blind-friendly resources tend to be Microsoft-centric? I tried to get him to switch over to Firefox, but he says that it doesn't work as well with JAWS as IE does." MP3 Players for the Visually Impaired? holden caufield asks: "As the geek-in-residence for my circle of friends, I've been asked the 'Which MP3 player should I buy?' question repeatedly, and I'm yet to offer an answer to them that doesn't rhyme with 'iPod'. Now I've been asked this very same question from a good friend who is blind (only *very* limited vision in one eye), and I'm thinking the iPod is still the way to go? Can anyone tell me their visually impaired experiences with MP3 players? Keep in mind, I don't mean 'can you now use it without looking at it?', since the learning curve would have been flattened for you by being able to study it originally. Any suggestions? A few reasons why I think the iPod will work for him:

• Simple user interface
• Cursor changes can be heard with (or without) headphones on
• Bright back-lighting may be helpful for him.

And now the constraints on the software side:

• He uses a screen reader (JAWS for Windows), so compatibility with that is possibly more important than nearly any other feature.
• He is looking for an MP3 player. Ogg and FLAC compatibility is not a consideration, and will not weigh in favor of any device.
• Sorry, but switching to Linux is not an option, however open-source that is Win32-compatible is fine."

Comments

OS X works for me

[mr100percent]

I beta tested some of Mac OS X's spoken user interface. The current version in 10.3 Panther is excellent, built right into the OS. It reads the text under the mouse, dialog boxes, has a variety of high-quality voices, and comes with basic speech recognition for launching apps and running scripts. The last feature has been there since 7.5, Mac users for years have been (frustrated with) using the "tell me a joke" voice script. Tiger looks like it will have even more, but Panther has a lot already.

I like OS X since it also has a bunch of other features for the handicapped, like zoom, contrast and grayscale adjustments. If you're not completely blind, this is quite useful. Check out the Universal Access preferences pane to see the hearing and keyboard and mouse stuff too.

mp3 player for the visually impaired? Hmmm, maybe a laptop running iTunes and the spoken interface enabled. I set it up to read any highlighted text when I hit F8. The only minor problem is that it reads the whole line in the playlist, the name, time, artist, album, genre, etc. That would make quick browsing kind of hard.

Re:OS X works for me

[mr100percent]

I was even able to post to slashdot with it, it would speak the text I was typing in, and recite the names of the buttons I was mousing over, ie. "Submit."

Re:OS X works for me

[BWJones]

I work in vision research. While we are making advancements in vision rescue and understanding of processes that occur in retinal degenerations, we are some years off from a true rescue. Therefore, technologies such as the ones offered through OS X are going to be significant to our patients who are currently having to deal with vision loss.

Of course Apple was having to work on their accessibility issues for federal approval, but not only are they are going far beyond the absolute base requirements, they have made the same OS a productive work environment for scientific research as well. Therefore, I am more than happy to try and integrate OS X into patient education and use as well as in my basic science research in the lab.

P.S. There is a movement within the National Library for the Blind to replace all of their "books on tape" with a digital format compatible with .mp3 and the iPod would be absolutely ideal here as well with just a little software engineering.

Re:OS X works for me

[Spy Hunter]

There has recently been a a bunch of great work work on integrating speech synthesis software with KDE. You can read about it here: "KDE 3.4 Will Talk to You". It's not yet ready for completely blind users but the plan is for KDE 4.0 to support blind users. Plus, it's just cool to have your computer talk.

Interactive Fiction

[Feneric]

For diversions, how about Interactive Fiction? It has a textual interface that lends itself well to speakerbox usage, shell accounts, and there's a vast library of free titles available.

Itch & Scratch

[Trurl's Machine]

A friend of mine is blind, yet he effortlessly navigates through his Windows XP box (installing programs, buying stuff on eBay, reading web-pages, etc) using JAWS. When I asked him what open source resources were available for him, I was surprised to hear him say, 'Almost nothing.' Is this true? Are we just not looking at the right places, or do blind-friendly resources tend to be Microsoft-centric?

Well, as they say, open source software is written when someone has to scratch an itch. Sounds nice, but it has that one unpleasant consequence: the open source community satisfies primarily the needs of the open source community, while the commercial & proprietary software developers at least try to pretend they actually satisfy the need of their customers. Since there's not much blind people among the open source community - there's not much free software writting for them. But since blind people have money and are able to buy a piece of software - there is some commercial software written for them. I think it's as simple as that.

The Mac, speaking English since 1984

[davidwr]

The original MacIntalk arrived in 1984, and was probably talking in the lab in 1983. There was even a developer's kit of sorts available. If I recall, it could speak English and Spanish directly and had a phonetic mode also.

A historical note:
I wasn't here, but I heard that the first Mac did, or was supposed to, introduce itself using MacIntalk. If true, in 1984 this would've had a lot of *ooh* *ahh* potential.

RockBox

[JaxWeb]

Regarding the MP3 player, make sure he checks out Rockbox.

Rockbox is an open source (GPL) firmware project for the Archos Recorder MP3 player (among others). They've done great work, which included Talkbox - extra code which can allow the MP3 player to 'talk' to the users.

Now the problem is that the actual hardware itself is terrible - that is not the Rockbox teams fault, of course, though.

I've seen on the mailing list some blind users who've written in just to comment about how helpful and useful the Talkbox features of Rockbox are. So it seriously does help people. It is an amazing project, and I really wish I had worked on it myself.

Anyway, check out the manual or something to check that it is suitable.

More history on Macintalk - Apple Technote PT22

[davidwr]

Here's a Technote from 1990:
Macintalk, the Final Chapter You can find some more tidbits on google's groups, search for Macintalk with a date filter of 1990.

Non-GUI UI

[Cranston Snord]

The thing that always gets me about computer technologies for the blind is that they seem to focus on providing a described graphical user interface for people who often have never seen anything in their lives. My grandmother went totally blind with macular degeneration (of the unfixable variety) over the past ten years. She doesn't want to learn windows. She doesn't want to learn a mac. She wants to send and recieve email. Explaining concepts like windows and how to use a mouse seem awfully stupid to me.

Building computers that focus on whole-system TTS interfaces via CLI apps seems to be a much better approach. Has anyone done anything like this that is explainable to a computer-illiterate blind grandmother?

The sysadmin in my CS dept is blind

[Raunch]

The sysadmin in my CS dept is blind, he uses linux exclusively, exept for telnetting into the solaris machines that he administers.

I have no idea what he uses, but he is completely blind. He has an audio output that reads what I assume is the output from the terminal at an incredible speed. I have never been able to understand what it is saying, but he is quick about the whole thing. Probably the fastest typist I know.