Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2012 08:21:04 -0500 From: Martin McCormick <martin@dc.cis.okstate.edu> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Off-Topic: Computing for the Blind Message-ID: <201203271321.q2RDL4NY045548@x.it.okstate.edu>
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Polytropon writes: > That's correct. However, unlike a Braille readout which > gives tactile information (through the reader's hands), > synthetic voice cannot easily accomodate to the reader's > habits and reading speed. "Scanning text" is not possible > as the generated voiced text is played in "linear time", > which means you cannot easily skip forward and backward, > re-read a certain passage, and you basically do not come > down to the "letter level", you only have a "word level". You are absolutely right on all counts. I was speaking from the standpoint of the amount of work and or extra expense that one would need to go through to get the interface fully operational. Nobody has yet figured out how to build a Braille display that is affordable, let's say 100 US Dollars or less for even one line of Braille much less a whole page or better yet a graphical screen that could display shapes and possibly textures that are not Braille characters. Prices of 5000 Dollars are not uncommon and single-line displays sell for well over 1000 Dollars anywhere you go. What is needed is a way to accomplish a tactile matrix that doesn't require precision machining or hand assembly for each pixel. That's why today's displays are so incredibly expensive and delicate. There are lots of neat ideas such as stimulators you might ware on your fingers as you move your hand over a large area, but making a tightly-packed matrix at almost microscopic level is still a pains-taking task. By the way, math done by any method other than Braille is darn next to useless. Equations in Braille can be formatted very much like they are in print and there is a whole Braille system for reading and writing math. So, I am not disagreeing at all with what you wrote here, just clarifying why I made the statements I made. > While this has benefits in "unconcentrated reading" (e. g. > reading an article or literature", it can be problematic > with scientific or technical text where a (healthy) reader > would let his eyes "jump" within the text stream. The thing I hate the most these days is the lost art of the linear declarative sentence. If the output of a program is some full-screen form in which the information one wants is in check boxes, you have to listen to the whole !%#%00--- thing just to find out whether or not it worked. There are usually one or two things we really wanted to know and the rest is unchanged but must be endured to get the one or two grains of wheat in all that chaff. Since it's full-screen stuff, it is hard to pipe to a script so I guess the artists are happy and the rest of us are just tapping our feet impatiently waiting for the water torture to end. Fortunately, unix operations are still relatively free from the worst GUI parlor tricks, but I use safari on a Mac to access some Windows-centric web sites related to work and they make me want to straighten out a horse shoe without a forge I get so mad at listening to the minutes of audio with the results of what I did always at or near the last of the text and there seems to be no way to stanch the deluge without loosing the gold nuggets. In conclusion, FreeBSD has been another wonderful open-source platform as far as I can say. Many of the systems I run it on here do not have sound cards and are either on virtual boxes, in other buildings or towns and so a speech or Braille console directly on the system isn't possible so I have always used some other device to provide accessibility and never been disappointed. After all, it's unix which means one can expect certain behaviors regarding standard devices. Martin
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