Re: Requirement for UA / SS protocol

On 11/19/2010 6:57 PM, Robert Brown wrote:
> I have an uneasy feeling about this.
>
> There are multiple layers of problems in the examples, but they don't sound like speech problems.  They sound a lot like problems with either: the remoting of audio I/O over terminal software; or the integration of accessibility tools with terminal applications.

I can understand the uneasiness. Yes it is in part driven by accessibility 
issuess if only because, accessibility issues show up all the up and down the 
stack. When people talk accessibility, they usually talking about some simple 
set of dog and pony tricks they can be easily implemented and aren't too 
embarrassing to the disabled person if they are caught using them. More advanced 
accessibility aids are usually a total redesign of user interface. For example, 
take an ATM. Now most of that scene have a little Jack in the same place for a 
set of headphones. Imagine that Jack filled epoxy and the bank never noticed for 
months and months. How you solve the problem of making the interface accessible?

With this split stream model I'm suggesting, it would be possible for a visually 
impaired person to pull out their handset, speed dial the ATM, stick their card 
into the ATM, and listen to what the ATM has to say as they navigate the ATM 
user interface from their handset.

There are a variety of ways to engineer this ranging from all operations at the 
bank to the bank translates input from speech recognition and runs the 
application on the ATM. Audio can come either from the ATM or the ATM sends 
events upstream to a text-to-speech system. Multiple streams, multiple sources, 
multiple destinations.

There's another issue which is if it isn't done now, will it be done at all? 
Ever since the first hominid busted a leg and was forever crippled, 
accessibility has been a second thought. We have a chance here to carefully look 
at the specification and engineer in accessibility from the start. You might 
consider a bit of a reach but this example shows why it should be done. Today, I 
can tell you at least two or three ways to provide the multiple host target 
capabilities we've been talking about using NaturallySpeaking.

Would it be useful? Yes
do people need it? Yes
Could improve employability of disabled programmers and administrators? Yes
Does nuance have an interest in doing it? No, not in the slightest.
Will it ever be done? Not unless I become filthy rich or google/Red Hat/ubuntu 
funds this effort.
Will doing it independently of infrastructure force reinvention of the wheel? Yes

When I made a presentation to nuance about doing this, the first reaction, from 
a marketing guy, was "can we charge for every machine we connect to?" While that 
could be appropriate in certain circumstances when talking about handicap 
accessibility, that's just plain evil.

This capability, in some form, could be added as an afterthought but there is 
little or no chance that it ever will be.  it's this inertia that has kept 
handicap accessibility frozen or even taking a step backwards over the past 15+ 
years.

If If there is no further discussion on the topic, I'll accept it as voting the 
idea down and will say no more on the topic.

Thanks for listening/reading
--- eric

Received on Monday, 22 November 2010 05:03:48 UTC