Re: What are the odds?

Might I note the existence of voiceover, which is Apple's response to
the lack of screenreaders for OS X?  Apple's accessibility folks have
done a pretty good job with all the universal access tools built into
OS X for both users and developers (e.g.
http://developer.apple.com/reference/Cocoa/idxAccessibility-date.html
and http://developer.apple.com/ue/) - something Windows and any
combination of software for it, including Jaws, can't provide.
Voiceover is even available on the OS X install disk...visually
impaired Windows users I know were shocked at the idea of having a
screenreader-assisted install process without any hackery..they're all
used to asking a sighted person to install Windows for them, or to get
an unattended install version.

There are a couple open source tools out there, but they're not
perfect either..two that come to mind are Firevox for firefox
(http://www.firevox.clcworld.net/) and Speakup for Linux
(http://www.linux-speakup.org/).  But they definitely exist, because
there's a good demand for them.

So, who says 3rd parties have to solve the current issues?  Apple's
doing a splendid job for their OS, and best of all it's free and
improving constantly.  I wish Microsoft would step up and do something
about it.

cheers,
jane

On 9/10/07, Maurice Carey <maurice@thymeonline.com> wrote:
>
> http://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1188895731&count=1
> " What might make my experiences with JAWS even more worrying is that I'm
> told JAWS is amongst the best of the available screen reader software. It
> certainly isn't worth its ridiculous $895 price tag (let alone the $1095
> price tag for the "professional" version I got). There is a big market
> opportunity here for someone to make a usable and affordable native speech
> Web browser or screen reader. Accessibility advocates could do more for
> accessibility by writing test suites for screen readers to check their basic
> HTML support (like supporting the p element) than they ever will by trying
> to educate Web authors."
>
> How much money do you think it would take to pay some open source coders
> (preferably people who are already hacking on firefox, konqueror) to come up
> with a better <strike>Screen</strike> Web Page Reader.
>
> What are the odds someone in the large and dedicated community of people who
> fight for the rights of the disabled could get a good fund raiser going to
> pay these programmers to build a reader?
>
>
>
> I say web page reader because 90% of the people I know only read the Web
> Page part of the screen.

Received on Tuesday, 11 September 2007 11:38:09 UTC