New Technology for the Blind? 213
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.
- 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."
Please read on for more (Score:0, Insightful)
Itch & Scratch (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Here's one to ponder - voting system for the bl (Score:1, Insightful)
Non-GUI UI (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:OS X works for me (Score:2, Insightful)
At some point or another, we have all (most likely) had an original tape walkman.
Could you operate that from your pocket without pulling it out?
An iPod is designed to be held in your hand and played with - like a modile phone or a deck of cards, its not designed for use whilst tucked away.
It seems like styling and design has overtaken functionality.
Maybe, it could be recaptured by allowing a simplified clicker interface on the pod, sacrifice extra faffing and scrolling and sorting for real straight forward play controls.
Re:US Govt contracts requires good tools (Score:3, Insightful)
The unfortunate rider is "except where it is illegal". Eg I can't use decss to make a DVD player for epileptics that filters out flashing video, or various other similar things. Apparently the right of the MPAA exceeds the rights of the epileptics.
And then we have ebooks..
"Bitkeeper doesn't pirate movies - people do"
Re:OS X works for me (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:OS X works for me (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:emacspeak (Score:2, Insightful)
My 12-yr-old son has been using Emacspeak for about two years now. It was a pain to set up as we are using the IBM ViaVoice TTS engine that was available for Linux for a while (but no more, even back then), meaning that I had to scrounge around and make do with some outdated zip files. The situation was also complicated by the fact that I was trying to use the somewhat broken built-in Via audio; things got much easier when I put in a cheap but authentic soundblaster card. Using a free software TTS engine like Festival [ed.ac.uk] wasn't quite ready for prime time back then, but I hope that by now it's a reasonable option.
So far we've just been using Emacspeak & Linux for me to teach him basic programming in Python; it's been great so far. We are just embarking on Emacs Lisp, partly for him to learn a different language, and partly so we can customize emacspeak should we find the need. FYI, he also uses JAWS on Win98 for web browsing and email (too many $$ to upgrade to the version of JAWS that runs on XP, unfortunately). He dual boots himself; adding a bunch of ctrl-Gs to the LILO prompt string lets him know when he reaches the prompt, and then he just hits 'w' for Windows or 'l' for Linux. I put some ctrl-G's in /etc/issue also so he knows when he gets to the login prompt. His .bash_profile sets some environment variables and runs emacspeak directly. He uses dired to manage his files.
Someday I'd like to get him up with reading email and surfing the web in emacspeak too, but I haven't had the time to get that set up.
BTW, related to another topic, I just heard about Rockbox a few days ago from another Slashdot post, so I bought an Archos Ondio off of Ebay with hopes of getting that working for a Christmas present. (Glad he doesn't read Slashdot himself, though it's probably just a matter of time!)