Re: Text-to-speech feature: a real help ?

I have recently been "playing" with the text to speech open source program 
Orca and was pretty much coming to that same conclusion.  it is not 
powerfull and flexible enough to be really helpful to a "power" screen 
reader user but would help those with less experience or a lower level of 
need.

sort of the other end of the spectrum from a very powerfull but complex 
screen reader like eMacspeak.

both need to be supported but they serve a different subgroup of text to 
speech/screen reader users.

Bob

On Tue, 21 Feb 2012, David Best wrote:

> Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2012 11:37:28 -0500
> From: David Best <davebest@ca.ibm.com>
> To: Patrick H. Lauke <redux@splintered.co.uk>
> Cc: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
> Subject: Re: Text-to-speech feature: a real help ?
> Resent-Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2012 16:39:43 +0000
> Resent-From: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
> 
> It really depends upon which user target base you are referring to. All
> users have different needs, and varying skills. I believe seniors, those
> with cognitive disabilities, and possibly those with English as a second
> language, might find the text-to-speech feature very helpful. However, the
> text-to-speech does not identify page elements like Links and Combo boxes,
> and thus limits its usefulness. Some users might find this a useful option
> for those web pages that have lots of text content, but would require the
> ability to focus the speech only to a section of the page. For those users
> that have user browser agent tools, there is little value, but for those
> that do not and have less experience in navigation, might consider it a
> helpful feature.
>
> ________________________________________________________________________________
> Cheers,
> David Best, Advisory IT Specialist
> IBM Global Business Services, Canada
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
>
> From:	"Patrick H. Lauke" <redux@splintered.co.uk>
> To:	w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
> Date:	02/21/2012 09:56 AM
> Subject:	Re: Text-to-speech feature: a real help ?
>
>
>
> On 21/02/2012 14:46, Terrill Bennett wrote:
>> I have to ask...
>>
>> 1) If the user requires text-to-speech to understand your site, how did
>> the user GET to your web site in order to benefit from this technology?
>> ("Magic" is not an acceptable answer).
>>
>> 2) If the user requires text-to-speech to understand your site, and
>> since users spend most of their time on OTHER web sites... what do they
>> use when they leave your site?
>>
>> Answering these two questions will probably answer your original
> question.
>
> I have to agree with Terrill's sentiment here. I've been known to be
> quite critical of these sorts of site-specific tools (a particular pet
> hate of mine has been BrowseAloud in the past) - though I'd even include
> things like text size switchers and colour changers to the list, as
> they're again site-specific.
>
> It's likely that users that need those sorts of tools have them
> installed on their machine already. The only use case that is then cited
> is "what about if they're not on their own machine...maybe in a library
> or an internet cafe, where they can't install anything" - which I'd
> still argue is then the responsibility of the library/cafe to provide
> assistive tech and relevant configuration options, rather than the
> burden being shifted onto each individual site.
>
> P
>
>
>> At 09:17 AM 2/21/2012, Régine Lambrecht wrote:
>>> Dear all,
>>>
>>> do you have references on how impaired users consider text-to-speech
>>> alternative, such as Readspeaker (http://www.readspeaker.com).
>>>
>>> Is it a good feature to add to a page that *is already accessible* ?
>>> Does it help impaired users or do they consider this negatively (maybe
>>> because you can?t skip paragraphs or easily read again words, for
>>> instance?) ?
>>>
>>> Thank you for your input
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> *Régine Lambrecht
>>> *E-fficiency Coordinator
>>> Prevention Advisor
>
>
> --
> Patrick H. Lauke
> ______________________________________________________________
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