[Ham-Computers] Screen reading software

[johngadd at comcast.net]

Duane You are a saint. Thank you for helping the blind. I work with mentally ill veterans. In the XP world I am using the Dragon 8 Naturally speaking "Preferred" version. Cost about $200 Trained EZ and I was up working in about an hour and Im slow. IBM product was very difficult. Hope this helps

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> When one uses a software synthesizer, that is, the internal sound card and 
> software to create synthetic speech, as opposed to a hardware based internal 
> card or external unit, you will encounter all sorts of conflicts. This is due to 
> various TSR in the HMA fighting for the same memory location. Such as losing 
> some, and sometimes all, sounds Windows generates for various boot up, shutdwon, 
> error and so forth. Additionally, almost all .wav files will not play due to 
> conflicts. 
> 
> The hardware synthesizer costs more, but eliminates 'ALL' of the memory 
> conflicts because it has onboard all that it needs. 
> 
> I have been here since before we had Text To Speech, helped in its development, 
> (I still have the original TTS code in Assembly language on a 5.25 inch 90K 
> diskette!), and have written many programs, including a talking word processing 
> program, numerous financial income/expense, music libraries, address/phone, mail 
> list and label, etc. programs over the past twenty years. All of which I gave 
> away, with two exceptions. 
> 
> All of which took on the average of 11K! The word processing program took 28K 
> with 32K of data storage for the files. 
> 
> I still use the majority of these programs daily. 
> 
> I have worked from the most crude, monotone, robotic voice, such as the ECHO PC 
> by Street Electronics to the DECTALK PC, the best of the lot. I prefer the DEC 
> hardware, even though it is far from inexpensive. The speech capability is 
> unlimited, the pronunciation accuracy is well over 96%, the flexibility is great 
> and the quality of speech is actually enjoyable. Whichis very important when 
> must listen to a computer talk for eight hours every day of the year! 
> 
> I got by with lesser hardware synthesizers, such as the G.W. Micro Sounding 
> Board for $400, but it was very robotic and anything but pleasant to listen to. 
> Their Windows reading program called Windows-Eyes sold for $595 the last I knew, 
> and worked quite well. However, it was inferior to JFW in many areas. One thing 
> I did not like, nor do I like, is that they did not allow their hardware 
> synthesizer to use the power of any other companies software. Thus if you owned 
> a DECTALK PC card or DEC Express external unit, you lost ALL the power of this 
> equipment! A real negative for G.W. Micro, who did it intentionally to promote 
> their Sounding Board product. 
> 
> The Artic Vision product was never very good. It worked, but was way too high 
> priced for what it was, sounded awful. I can understand almost anyone's 
> synthetic speech easily, as i am accustomed to hearing it for a quarter of a 
> century! But I had problems with Artic as many letters were not distinguishable 
> from another. Such as "B" and "G" and "D" and "V". There is a option to have a 
> character spoken phonetically, but this was very awkward to use with Artic, not 
> so for anyone else, however. Artic only survived because some people convinced 
> state rehab agencies to supply it to blind students on loan. Nobody got to keep 
> them! When the child got out of high school, the electronic aids were taken back 
> and good luck! 
> 
> The DOS software I paid $495 for, is now free. The one thing I love about it is, 
> total control for the user! It blows any, and all, Windows screen reading 
> software away. However, the way in which alphabetic characters were created has 
> changed from numeric values of ASCII to graphic characters that comprise a 
> letter today. Windows is graphics based and it is only going to get worse for 
> the blind. unfortunately. 
> 
> I spent many years helping the blind configure their computers, for free. I 
> never charged them a cent, as I knew they did not have it to begin with. i put 
> their systems together, programmed them, configured them and taught them how to 
> use them. All on my own time and at my own expense. 
> 
> A number of companies asked me to represent them, i refused them all. Why? 
> Because if I represented henter-Joyce Inc., now Freedom Scientific Inc., I had 
> to sell 'only' their products. I refused to do that because each blidn person 
> had different needs, levels of skill and so forth. I always tried to put 
> together the system that would best serve his/her needs, with no thought as to 
> who's products I used. I did not want, and refused to be, bound to any one 
> manufacturer. That was about money, i was about helping my fellow blind 
> compatriots. 
> 
> There are good products out there, but all of them cost money. A lot of it. The 
> handicapped live at, generally below, the national poverty level. They can not 
> afford these wonderful aids and/or appliances that would make their lives more 
> productive, give them an image of self-worth from the independence gained, give 
> them job skills and allow them to do the simple things that those who are not 
> handicapped do and never give a moments thought to. But the states do not give 
> this stuff away to the handicapped, nor does the federal government. it is 
> almost always through service clubs such as a Lions Club, family, friends etc. 
> 
> A computer with speech for the blind person who has average abilities, as 
> opposed to severe mental or other further disabling physical issues, is in my 
> opinion, the best thing since Braill was first introduced. Windows may take this 
> away from the blind, sadly. But after all, it is a sighted world and all of 
> these products are about one thing, profit for the manufacturer I was foolish 
> enough to think that when the cost of the technology came down, as it has 
> drastically, that these products would be easier for the blind, and other 
> handicapped persons, to obtain. i could not have been more wrong. 
> 
> Duane Fischer, w8DBF 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ---------- 
> From: Kim 
> To: ham-computers at mailman.qth.net 
> Subject: [Ham-Computers] Screen reading software 
> Date: Wednesday, June 01, 2005 8:08 AM 
> 
> Aloha, I was sent some archived mail from this site. It is important to know 
> that screen reading software for the blind is a very complicated program. One 
> individual said it was $795, now it seems, it is $895 but you can use the built 
> in speech synthesizer. The program does not work with all applications but new 
> scripts are being developed for several popular applications. Microsoft has 
> added the MSAA service which interacts with "JAWS" to offer information to the 
> blind user. A demo can be downloaded from "HJ.com"/"downloads"/"JAWS screen 
> reading software". I have missed some of the mailings and hope I am not 
> imposing on anyone. Artic Vision also has a screenreader for DOS and they have 
> a website as well. 
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