Re: screen readers for free

There are in fact a number of free products like screen readers. Emacspeak,
Websound, Braillenet are also tools working in this area. And there are
countries like Denmark where the software is purchased for people with
disabilities - that is a form of social welfare that some political systems
encourage and others do not.

Cheers

Charles

On Wed, 11 Jul 2001, Paul Davis wrote:


  Hi,

  I hate to keep praising the virtues of Brookes University in Oxford, (well,
  I don't really) but why pay when you can have one free? and not for a tiny
  limited time either, it is about 10 weeks off becoming the final version, in
  the mean time download the beta version @
  http://www.brookes.ac.uk/schools/cms/research/speech/dload1.htm

  Interestingly enough I was asked this week if I would support a
  movement/campaign to the effect that text readers and speech browsers should
  be provided free anyway for disabled people, is this living in a dream world
  to expect this as standard? My initial reaction was the only people with
  that sort of money or incentive is Microsoft or Netscape.

  I wonder if that would have been a better compromise for the NFB/AOL debacle
  last year, than the non agreement to do anything constructive that they
  actually settled for? Could someone enlighten me, has anything actually
  happened apart from sound bytes on that front or are the legal profession
  currently sharpening claws?

  I would have thought AOL could afford to make one page accessible and offer
  a free text reader download, it could no doubt have been achievable for less
  than the legal profession made out of the deal. After all if I can afford to
  do it on ten-20 with a budget of 3 rice cakes and a snickers, surely the
  likes of AOL could stump up the cash for the software? Or is this too
  logical?

  There is of course the argument corporate America (and everywhere else
  corporate I hasten to add) does not wish to embrace the dodgy concept of
  FREE anything!!??!! You can of course call it free providing it is priced
  into another product. But free for free is not a welcome idea.

  I like it however.

  smiles
  Paul Davis
  http://www.ten-20.com The portal website for disabled people and associated
  professionals.




-- 
Charles McCathieNevile    http://www.w3.org/People/Charles  phone: +61 409 134 136
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative     http://www.w3.org/WAI    fax: +1 617 258 5999
Location: 21 Mitchell street FOOTSCRAY Vic 3011, Australia
(or W3C INRIA, Route des Lucioles, BP 93, 06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France)

Received on Thursday, 12 July 2001 22:25:19 UTC