Hi everyone!  I'm Heather DeMarco at the business desk and it's time for our weekly feature.

We'd like to thank all of the wonderful emails of encouragement and we hope you enjoy this week's chosen articles.

Here they are.  Enjoy!

 

Table of contents

August 29 2007

 

1  Web Site Readability for the Visually Impaired
2  A Simple, Low-Cost, Effective Reading Application *- the business desk.
3  Launch of Insight Radio on the airwaves *- the business desk.
4  Sound Rts! New Real Time Audio Stratogy Game. *- the business desk
5  CallBurner: Finally, Fully Accessible Skype Call Recording is Here at Last!*- the business desk.
6  Internet TV Tuner for the Blind
7  The Impressor: Braille Business Card Embosser

 

Chris.Pirillo.com (Blog)
Monday, July 09, 2007
 
Web Site Readability for the Visually Impaired
 
By Chris Pirillo
 
July 9, 2007 at 2:22 pm
 
Lin (from the live chat room) has sent me an idea tht will turn into an upcoming video segment:
 
Friends are always asking me to look at their website and tell them if I like it. What about the colors, the images, how about the spelling, the grammar, the placement of everything? The one thing they seldom ask is; how easy is my site to read?
 
Many people who use a pc are to some degree visually impaired. They are either nearsighted, have astigmatism or any number of other vision problems that can make reading web pages difficult, annoying, or next to impossible. I often get the feeling the designers are way more interested in impressing people with their cleverness, their technical abilities and their artistic sensibilities, than making a site user friendly.
 
I am constantly surprised, when I go to huge websites, run by giant companies, even worldwide corporations, to find their websites are virtually unreadable, or give me such terrible eye strain, I lose interest and go elsewhere.
 
Often, these websites want to sell me something. How anxious do they think I will be to give them my money, if they don't even have the courtesy and good sense to make their site easy to read and easy to navigate through? How much time am I going to spend, trying to find the link I need to click, to see product details, or to pay for something? I am usually not in the mood to be playing Where's Waldo, when I'm shopping online!
 
Why do so many sites insist on using a font size that would be more appropriate for writing the great American novel on the head of a pin? I see this on very small personal websites, where they have only a small amount of text on each page, so they certainly aren't cramped for space. I see the same on large business websites, I guess because they want to cram as much information onto each page as possible, but what good is that, if everything is so small, half the people who go there cannot easily read or navigate through the site?
 
When I arrive at a website, I also want to be greeted by font styles where all the letters and numbers are clear as to what they are, without me having to take time to decipher the characters. I don't want an S that could maybe be a 5, or a 5 that could maybe be an S, or an R that
looks nothing like any R I've ever seen before. I like artistic and unique font styles, but not if they are puzzling and somewhat illegible.
 
Another problem is the combination of colors and images designers use behind the text. Often the background obliterates the text, or makes it at least somewhat difficult to read. Again, do you want it pretty and artistic, or do you want it readable? Pretty is nice, but readable is most important. In my opinion, a designer who can accomplish both is the good designer.
 
Another readability problem is lines of text that are too close together. Many people have trouble keeping their eyes on one line of text, if it's too close to the line above, and/or the line below it. When I read a book, a magazine or a newspaper, I need to place a 3 x 5 card or a ruler horizontally below the line of text I am reading. There's no easy way to do that on a webpage you are viewing on a vertical, upright monitor.
 
Bottom line: People of all ages have vision problems, and even though the internet is considered a young person's medium, all those young users, who currently have 20/20 vision are aging, along with the rest of us. At some point, their vision will no longer be 20/20 either and the farther we travel into this technological age, the more visually impaired users there will be.
 
I have a brother who is six years younger than me. He was born with 20/20 vision. He teased me mercilessly about my 'blindness' all of my life. until he turned 50, and had to give in and get his first pair of prescription glasses. Funny thing about that - he teases me no more. 8-)
 
Web Site Readability for the Visually Impaired

 

As Your World Changes (Blog)
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
 
A Simple, Low-Cost, Effective Reading Application
 
By Susan L. Gerhart
 
As Your World Changes
 Adjusting to vision loss with class, using technology
 
Simple Reading Applications
 
Let's assume you can find your way around a screen through a combination of vision, memory, keyboarding, and mousing but can't read much of the text in documents you access. Is there a low-cost Windows application to read the text for you?
 
Yes, lots to choose from. Search for the phrase "text-to-speech" and you'll find advertisements and websites for freeware, shareware, and all kinds of products at less than $100. This blog article is for beginner Vision Losers as well as those looking for alternatives to higher cost assistive technology products.
 
My main reader for years is TextAloud from http://www.nextup.com, which I'll discuss as a representative of this class of desktop applications. Some use cases are:
 
1) In order to read a .txt file on your disk, you open the file for TextAloud to speak it to you. Ditto for .doc, .pdf, and other standard formats.
 
2) While browsing you find a page you can't read in screen font form. You click the TextAloud toolbar to read the page in a voice and at a rate you choose.
 
3) You just do not feel like sitting straight-up with your eyeballs glued to your screen to read a long document. You copy the text to the clipboard, which TextAloud monitors for changes and then reads the text to you.
 
4) You want a bunch of files in audio form for an MP3 player. Open the files in TextAloud to convert to mp3 format and save in a directory for downloading.
 
5) You're editing a document and want to hear how it sounds for tone, style, and mistakes. Beyond audio editing, maybe you'd like to compare male and female sounding voices to see how your writing is perceived by gender-wired brains. Open or copy the draft into TextAloud, choose voices, and listen to your writing as if being narrated.
 
In other words, TextAloud is a simple word processor with special features for reading the text to you or converting text to mp3 (or WAY) format to be read on another device. One piece of Windows magic is the "copy to clipboard" which transfers text to TextAloud for optional immediate reading.
 
And, it's so helpful to have TextAloud right in your browser. Depending on versions and types of browsers, you can have TextAloud as a up there with Search, Favorites, History, etc.. Simply select text to read, wave your mouse over to the easily seen button, click "Speak", and text is read, even if the desktop application is not loaded. But, wait, there's more, a bonus zoom plus and minus to avoid a trip into the menus to change text size. As long as you can see the toolbar buttons, text-to-speech is just a click away.
 
Uh, oh, I'm starting to sound like a commercial here, but my point is simple: this particular product in the low-cost text-to-speech application space performs a lot of functions your vision may not be able to handle.
 
Really, synthetic voices are a miraculous technology that enables your brain to understand text as if human-read. Older, i.e. 1990ish voices, the ones built into Windows, sound robotic while newer voices are "natural" derived from slices of human speech. We'll explore these more in a future posting, including fascinating studies about how our brains are socially biased in their speech wiring. Listen to sample readings on an informative and vision-friendly podcast, Allison Sheridan's NosillaCast at http://www.podfeet.com
 
TextAloud can be purchased with a bundle of voices which sell individually for around $30. Yes, indeed, buy yourself a choir of male-female, old or young, American-Brit accented voices for a variety of listening experiences. Beware if you are low on GB of disk space as these voice data files are large, upwards of 200 MB to 800 MB. Get to know Kate and Paul, Mike and Crystal, Ray, Claire, Alex, and their developers at RealSpeak, NeoSpeech, ViaVoice, Microsoft, Cepstral, and the home grounds at ATT Labs.
 
OK, here's the down-sides of this product. It comes with "skins" to change its look, but they are all way too bright for my photo-receptors so only the No-skin look is available, but it can be customized for font size and color. I like Ariel, size 14 or 16. White or Yellow on a Dark Blue background. Another problem is that opening a Microsoft Word file means suffering template and installation messages as Word itself is opened, and, no, I can't take it back to the former employer I got it from .For my eyesight and keyboard skills, a drop-down box listing the currently active files is confusing and hard to use. But none of these are show-stoppers nor any worse than other products.
 
Other applications I've used with satisfaction for similar tasks, especially the "read from clipboard" function, are CoolSpeech from http://www.bytecool.com and ACE-HIGH from http://www.textreader.net/ Unfortunately, CoolSpeech ran afoul of my virus checking software and lost its clipboard functionality. This blog post isn't a product review but here's one Disability Professional's product assessment from Beth Case at Disability411 podcast #YYY at URL.
 
As both a visually impaired user and a software developer myself, I've noticed one significant difference among applications in their model of handling multiple requests for readings coming from browsers and other apps copying to the clipboard TextAloud uses a Blocking model, where any request to reads is rejected until the current is done, with an accompanying beep if desired. CoolSpeech uses a sequential reading model where requests are queued and read to completion, one after another. ACE HIGH uses an Interruption model where a read may not completed with new requests starting immediately. Your satisfaction with a product may depend on how well your usage profile matches its read sequencing model.
 
One final note of warning is that all the voices and applications I've tried are easily over-loaded by multiple requests or voice changes, starting to slow down, stop, or speak at the same time, or otherwise babble. TTS isn't perfect but works amazingly well.
 
So, here's a type of desktop application, and one particular satisfied customer for one leading product that Vision Losers can consider. In our theme of "As Your World Changes", you may find tools like this necessary and/or sufficient some days, or in some lighting situations. With a modest investment in software and voice data files, you now have a classy interface for reading on your PC or mp3 or CD players. Of course, sighted people can use these tools also, but often seem, in our terminology, to be happy with "their eyeballs glued to their screens", or printed pages, reading the old-fashioned way. Visually impaired people are sometimes the early adopters of technologies like these and go through an evolutionary phase of learning to listen in order to survive in an information-rich world.
 
Check these out:
 
Voice samples in NoscillaCast #102 and #103 at http://www.podfeet.com.
Other assistive technology information, also.
 
Disability Professional's take on many low-cost assistive technology products http://disability411.jinkle.com/show23.htm
 
TextAloud product from
http://www.nextup.com
 
CoolSpeech product from
http://ww.bytecool.com
 
ACE HIGH Text-to-Speech from
http://www.textreader.net.
 
Future blog articles: "Wired for Speech" book and studies by Stanford professor Clifford Nass; "synthetic voices all around", co-evolving with humans; high-and-low cost screen readers; how applications speak.
 
This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 11th, 2007 at 12:51 am and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

 

Susan L. Gerhart
Prescott Arizona
July 2007
slger123@gmail.com
 
http://asyourworldchanges.wordpress.com/2007/07/11/a-simple-low-cost-effective-reading-application/

 

National Music for the Blind (Blog)
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
 
Launch of Insight Radio on the airwaves
 
For everyone  Jul 10, '07 1:03 PM
 
The Sony Award winning station, already broadcasting world wide on the internet, now broadcasts on 101FM in Glasgow.
 
Insight Radio, Europe's first radio service for blind and partially sighted people, celebrated its arrival on the airwaves at a reception at the Lighthouse, Glasgow, on 5 July.
 
Ross Macfadyen, Radio Services Manager, RNIB, said: "Today we are marking the official launch of the radio service on 101FM in Glasgow and our new name, 'Insight Radio'. Since going on air we've had a brilliant first six months winning a Sony Award and great feedback from our listeners. Now we're looking forward to more exciting developments."
 
Insight Radio is funded by a consortium of organisations led by RNIB Scotland and including Glasgow City Council, British Wireless for the Blind, East Renfrewshire Council and South Lanarkshire
 
Radio community
 
John Legg, Director of RNIB Scotland, said: "This is an exciting opportunity. We are creating a very special community of broadcasters and listeners, listening to each other. We're not just providing blind and partially sighted people with information and entertainment; we're enabling them to feel part of the radio station."
 
Overcoming isolation
 
Insight Radio provides blind and partially sighted listeners with quick and easy access to information and public services as well as leisure, recreational and social opportunities to help reduce feelings of isolation.
 
The station currently broadcasts from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday to Friday, with evening and weekend programmes in the planning stage. Listeners enjoy a varied programme mix ranging from newspaper and magazine reviews through music request programmes to interactive phone-ins and lifestyle and feature programmes, all presented with the blind or partially sighted listener in mind.
 
Training opportunities
 
Insight Radio also creates training and employment opportunities. Sixty percent of full-time employees at the station are blind or partially sighted including all its presenters who are assisted on-air by sighted volunteer co-presenters.
 
The station aims to enhance the service to its listeners by encouraging external agencies who have information or advice for people with sight loss to contribute directly to the output.
 
Read more at - http://www.insightradio-net.com/
 
http://music4blind.multiply.com/journal/item/34

 

AudioGames.net
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
 
Sound Rts! New Real Time Audio Stratogy Game.
 
By dark empathy, Super Audio Gamer
 
Sound Rts! New Real Time Audio Stratogy Game.
 
It's always fantastic when a game just suddenly appears out of the blue, particularly when it's a game in a genre which I've personally been absolutely aching to play more of. I'm speaking of course about real time Audio stratogy war games.
 
sound Rts is a free audio stratogy game developed by Jean-luc Pontico, based upon the popular warcraft series of fantasy battle games.
 
In this game you become the general of an army, commanding peasants, foot soldiers, knights, archers, catapults mages and dragons against enemy forces, and only wise leadership and optimal use of resources will win the day.
 
You may play against the computer, carry out a number of military missions, or connect to and challenge other players over the internet. the game is also available in French!
 
So, what are you waiting for! go here to the sound rts page to download the game and begin your campeign of conquest!
 
LINK:
http://jlpo.free.fr/soundrts/
 
Please note, that the game is stil a beta version, but is nevertheless incredibly playable. Feel free to discuss the game in our forums.
 
Now please excuse me, I have troops to train!
 
Last edited by dark empathy (2007-07-03 06:24:46)
 
Let your dream begin,
Let your darker side give in,
to the power of the
music that I write.
Help me make the music of the night.
 
http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?id=1407
Blind Access Journal
Saturday, July 07, 2007
 
CallBurner: Finally, Fully Accessible Skype Call Recording is Here at Last!
 
By Darrell Shandrow
 
The people at Netralia, developers of the Skylook Skype call management and recording application for Microsoft Outlook, have recently released a new Skype call recording product that does not depend on Outlook. The new CallBurner application enables annotation and recording of all Skype calls while providing a clean, simple user interface.
 
LINK:
http://www.callburner.com/
 
After learning of the existence of this new product, I downloaded a trial copy of the software. While finding it reasonably usable for basic call recording, I found the call detail window largely inaccessible with any screen reader, including JAWS, System Access and Window-Eyes. I promptly wrote a short note to the company's support e-mail address requesting accessibility enhancements to permit full use of CallBurner with screen reading software. On Thursday, July 5, I was absolutely flabbergasted to receive a response from the company's senior developer offering a beta copy of an accessible version of the software for my testing! This response came in less than three weeks of my initial request!
 
After downloading the test copy of CallBurner, I immediately began to put it through its paces. After enabling "Screen Reader Compatibility" in the Accessibility sub-menu of the program's System Tray icon, I was instantly delighted to discover extensive keyboard navigation, a tabbed Call Details dialogue box and full accessibility without need of screen reader configuration or scripts. Follow these steps to enable "Screen Reader Compatibility" after downloading and installing CallBurner:
 
Minimize all running programs and focus on the Desktop by pressing Left Windows+M.
 
Press JAWS Key+F11, Modifier+F11 (System Access) or Insert+S (Window-Eyes) to open the System Tray menu.
 
Down arrow to CallBurner and press enter to right click its System Tray icon.
 
Press enter on the Accessibility sub-menu.
 
Press enter on "Screen Reader Compatibility". This is the only option currently found in the Accessibility sub-menu.
 
The following dialogue box is shown: "Screen Reader Compatibility is now turned ON. NOTE: You need to restart CallBurner for this change to become effective."
 
Press enter on the OK button to accept the change.
 
Press JAWS Key+F11, Modifier+F11 (System Access) or Insert+S (Window-Eyes) to return to the System Tray menu.
 
Down arrow to CallBurner and press enter to right click its System Tray icon.
 
Up arrow to the Quit option and press enter.
 
Press the Left Windows key or CTRL+Escape to open the Start menu.
 
Press p to open the All Programs menu.
 
Down arrow to CallBurner and press enter to open its sub-menu.
 
Press enter on CallBurner to start the program. The Call Details window opens, presenting a tabbed dialogue box that delivers a fully accessible user interface to all CallBurner functions.
 
Press the End key to move to the Help tab.
 
Press the Tab key once to select Browse On-Line Help and press enter to open CallBurner's documentation in a typical web browser window. This help will serve to get you started with CallBurner in short order.
 
The latest version of CallBurner, incorporating the "Screen Reader Compatibility" enhancement, has been made available as of Saturday, July 7, 2007. I highly recommend CallBurner to anyone, blind or sighted, who needs to record Skype calls. The ability and willingness of the developers to make their software accessible in less than three weeks of such a request demonstrates the commitment of this company to high quality, reliable customer service and technical support. We should all send a quick note of thanks to the CallBurner Team expressing our appreciation for their prompt attention to our accessibility needs and encouraging their developers to continue the excellent work in this area for all their software.
 
LINK: The Callburner Team email
callburner@callburner.com
 
Stay tuned to Blind Access Journal and other blind community online resources for demonstrations, reviews, tips and other information covering the use of this excellent application.
 
posted by Darrell at 12:38 PM

 

http://www.blindaccessjournal.com/2007/07/callburner-finally-fully-accessible.html

 

The Fred's Head Companion
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
 
Internet TV Tuner for the Blind
 
By Michael McCarty
 
Internet TV tuners are nothing new. There are tons of programs that claim to have the most stations, best interface and best performance for your computer. The truth is that most of these programs are totally useless by the blind and most of their links don't work.
 
I have found a program that does what it says. You truly can tune into over fifteen hundred internet TV stations and the links actually work. The program works well with JAWS and Window Eyes and is really fun to use.
 
JLC's Internet TV is a program for watching free online TV channels. It automatically finds over fifteen hundred channels and has an online updater to keep the channel list updated. This program is completely free of charge and is 100% accessible to people using screen readers and screen magnification programs.
 
Features:
 
Watch over fifteen hundred online TV channels for free!
 
User friendly interface with built-in channel list.
 
Channel updater which keeps your list synchronized with the list at World Wide Internet TV
 
LINK:
http://wwitv.com/
 
Program updater automatically keeps your program up to date.
 
Powerful search function lets you easily find any channel.
 
Favorite list to keep a track of your favorite channels.
 
Absolutely NO spyware/adware or malware included!
 
Requirements:
 Windows Media Player
Real Player or Real Alternative
 
Click this link to download - JLC's Internet TV.
http://jlc-software.com/index.php?page=internet_tv.html
 
Posted by Michael McCarty at 11:36 AM
 
http://fredsheadcompanion.blogspot.com/2007/07/internet-tv-tuner-for-blind.html

 

The Fred's Head Companion
 Wednesday, July 11, 2007
 
The Impressor: Braille Business Card Embosser
 
By Michael McCarty
 
Easily create your own braille business cards! Similar to the stamp used by notary publics. The die which embosses braille on your card is custom-made with your information.
 
Features
 
Easy to use: insert a standard 3 1/2 x 2 inch business card into the embosser.
 
Squeeze - and your card is brailled instantly!
 
Metal construction
 
Acrylic base for one-hand operation
 
Embosses up to 4 lines, 13 braille cells per line
 
Call us at 800-223-1839 to initiate an order. Then mail us a copy of your business card. We will then call you to confirm your information as it appears in braille.
 
Impressor:
Catalog Number: 1-03380-00
 
Message: My office recently found 3 hand-held Braille business card embossers which contain the APH logo, which we did not know we had. We do not currently have a staff member who can read Braille, thus we do not know if the information on the embossers is still accurate. Do you know where I could send their imprints, in order to get a written translation? If the imprints are no longer accurate, do you offer replacements without buying an entirely new embosser? Thanks in advance.
Location: Washington, DC
 
The easiest and probably quickest way to get a translation of what is on the Impressors you have found is to place a business card in each of them and squeeze firmly. Then, send each of the cards to me and I will translate them and email you the text of each.
 
So that you know which message goes with each Impressor, you might number both the card and the Impressor that you use to stamp it. It may be that none, one, two or all may be fine.
 
Once you know your situation, you can have an Impressor modified. You will need to return the entire impressor to us for modification.
 
Once everyone knows the situation I can give you information about returning any units that may need modifying.
 
Please send the cards to:
 
Fred Gissoni
 Technical Support
American Printing House for the Blind
1839 Frankfort Avenue
Louisville, KY 40206
 
Impressor Revised:
Catalog Number: 1-03380-01
 
I hope this gives you the information you need. Note: Impressor or Revision not available on Quota.
 
Click here to purchase these items through our Quick Order Entry page: http://shop.aph.org/quickentry.asp
 
If you need assistance, click this link to read the Fred's Head Companion post "Purchasing Products From The APH Website Is Easy".
 
http://fredsheadcompanion.blogspot.com/2005/11/purchasing-products-from-aph-website.html
 
Posted by Michael McCarty at 12:01 PM
 
http://fredsheadcompanion.blogspot.com/2006/02/impressor-braille-business-card.html

At the business desk, I'm Heather DeMarco bidding you a relaxing summer's evening.