Re: Are Screenreaders "aural" devices?

a screen reader is characterized by the following:
1> use of the keyboard only to facilitate navigation when using a computer.
One could argue that one could use a screen reader for this reason alone if
one were in need of an environment of this type but still used vision to
read the screen.
2> information is conveyed through means such as a speech synthesizer or
braille display and arguably, allow changes in the ui to compensate for
differences in visual capabilities of the user such as by changing the
colors, contrast and font sizes etc.  Css is for presentation, screen
readers controll presentation so are not aural devices.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Woolley" <david@djwhome.demon.co.uk>
To: <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Sent: Saturday, June 14, 2003 7:01 AM
Subject: Re: Are Screenreaders "aural" devices?



> package has eyes that turn what happens in the computer into an auditory
> interactive experience with the aide of a speech synthesizer and or a

That is not an argument for aural not being the best media type to
describe them, but one for a new media type.  The real reason that
JAWS etc. don't act as being of aural type is that authors don't
write style sheets for that type.  The same would apply with a more
refined classification.

My impression is that the CSS authors were thinking of screenreaders when
they created that type.

PS "auditory interactive experience" sounds like its straight out of
a product brochure.

Received on Saturday, 14 June 2003 08:39:38 UTC