[laptop-accessibility] Screen reader software -- any progress?

Hemant Goyal goyal.hemant at gmail.com
Sun Feb 10 12:14:04 EST 2008


Hi Tim,

As Gilles pointed out, once we are done with integration of
speech-dispatcher we intend to explore orca which I think is used by many
people with low-vision. orca has built-in support for speech-dispatcher and
from my understanding provides locational information to the user.

I request you to explore orca with speech-dispatcher as the speech-synthesis
engine once if you have not already done so.

Thanks!
Hemant

On Feb 10, 2008 10:30 PM, <accessibility-request at lists.laptop.org> wrote:

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> Today's Topics:
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>   1. Re: Screen reader software -- any progress? (Hemant Goyal)
>   2. Re: Screen reader software -- any progress? (Duane King)
>   3. Re: Screen reader software -- any progress? (Tim hobbs)
>   4. Re: Screen reader software -- any progress? (Gilles Casse)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Sat, 9 Feb 2008 22:50:51 +0530
> From: "Hemant Goyal" <goyal.hemant at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [laptop-accessibility] Screen reader software -- any
>        progress?
> To: "Brad Paulsen" <brad.paulsen at gmail.com>
> Cc: accessibility at lists.laptop.org, Assim Deodia
>        <assim.deodia at gmail.com>
> Message-ID:
>        <8c53493a0802090920q498f74aeo303ae65b0d7e19 at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> Brad,
>
> Maybe we should coordinate our efforts. We are presently working to bring
> speech synthesis capabilities on the XO.
>
> We have made significant progress and are documenting our results here :
> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Screen_Reader [It is slightly outdated wrt the
> DBUS speech server, as we are planning to dump that approach and instead
> use
> speech-dispatcher]
>
> At present Assim Deodia is working to improve the eSpeak phoneme data for
> better voice quality/output on the XO, and I am working on integrating
> speech-dispatcher in the XO as a means of providing a simple to use speech
> synthesis api.
>
> I have opened a Ticket which might interest you :
> http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/6284
>
> Best,
> Hemant
>
> This posting is very new and, at the moment, consists only of a block
> > diagram of the approach I am proposing.  I have several pages of
> narrative
> > in the works at the moment and I am hoping to post the first version of
> it
> > to the Free Speech wiki article sometime this weekend.  In the meantime,
> > please check out the links in the "See also" section of the article.
>  Those
> > linked-to articles contain links to other speech-related efforts
> currently
> > underway for the XO (for example, eSpeak).
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Brad
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> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Thu, 7 Feb 2008 22:23:12 -0800
> From: Duane King <dking at pimpsoft.com>
> Subject: Re: [laptop-accessibility] Screen reader software -- any
>        progress?
> To: accessibility at lists.laptop.org
> Cc: Assim Deodia <assim.deodia at gmail.com>,      Hemant Goyal
>        <goyal.hemant at gmail.com>
> Message-ID: <200802072223.12534.dking at pimpsoft.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain;  charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> Brad,
>  Another advantage to using the speech dispatcher and its API is that a
> lot of
> wok can be leveraged from it; There is an entire community gathered around
> it
> already, and its already used in production systems by blind computer
> professionals like myself, hence why I suggested it to Hemant off the
> list.
>
> I would personalky love it if more people joined our little co-oped
> efforts;
> and by all means your group - or any others - are more then welcome to do
> so.
>
> - Duane
>
> On Saturday 09 February 2008 09:20:51 am Hemant Goyal wrote:
> > Brad,
> >
> > Maybe we should coordinate our efforts. We are presently working to
> bring
> > speech synthesis capabilities on the XO.
> >
> > We have made significant progress and are documenting our results here :
> > http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Screen_Reader [It is slightly outdated wrt the
> > DBUS speech server, as we are planning to dump that approach and instead
> > use speech-dispatcher]
> >
> > At present Assim Deodia is working to improve the eSpeak phoneme data
> for
> > better voice quality/output on the XO, and I am working on integrating
> > speech-dispatcher in the XO as a means of providing a simple to use
> speech
> > synthesis api.
> >
> > I have opened a Ticket which might interest you :
> > http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/6284
> >
> > Best,
> > Hemant
> >
> > This posting is very new and, at the moment, consists only of a block
> >
> > > diagram of the approach I am proposing.  I have several pages of
> > > narrative in the works at the moment and I am hoping to post the first
> > > version of it to the Free Speech wiki article sometime this weekend.
>  In
> > > the meantime, please check out the links in the "See also" section of
> the
> > > article.  Those linked-to articles contain links to other
> speech-related
> > > efforts currently underway for the XO (for example, eSpeak).
> > >
> > > Cheers,
> > >
> > > Brad
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Sat, 9 Feb 2008 18:09:01 -0800
> From: "Tim hobbs" <tim.thelion at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [laptop-accessibility] Screen reader software -- any
>        progress?
> To: dking at pimpsoft.com, "Discussion of accessibility on the OLPC"
>        <accessibility at lists.laptop.org>
> Message-ID:
>        <650efde80802091809l6f01c651v34e32dd2aee43036 at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> I am strongly opposed to the use of a vanilla Activity-Speech
> dispatcher communicating for the following reasons:
> 1.  Visually impaired and cognitively impaired persons *must* have a
> standardised keyboard navigation system which is both intuitive(with a
> low learning curve), and well intigrated into the speech server,
> Speech dispatcher does not mandate such a thing.
> 2.  There is no geometric or locational information sent with the
> text.  I for one have very low visual acuity, this means that my eyes
> don't stay in one place and have difficulty tracking from line to
> line.  I very successfully use a setup where the current line is
> positive polarity, and the background text is negative
> http://www.timthelion.com/emacs-current-line-polarity.png ,  I work
> even better if the current line of text is magnified.  A plug-in to
> speech dispatcher which instead of speaking or outputting to brail,
> magnified text at an appropriate location on the screen is impossible
> without that location being tracked by the Activity.
>
> I have written a proposal for a different protocol which solves these
> problems. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Accessibility_Line_Based_Interface
> I urge you to look at this and consider what it provides that speech
> dispatcher does not, namely:
>
> 1. A very simple intuitive, "navigational" instead of "magic hotkey"
> keyboard accessibility setup.
>
> 2. Geometric information about text.
>
> Otherwise, I believe the two standards/protocols to be functionally
> identical so there should be no real need to change course.  Maybe my
> ideas can be implemented as easily as having SayText take (text, x, y,
> w,h) and implementing line based keyboard accessibility which triggers
> such events in Sugar Activities.
>
> Thankyou,
> Timothy
>
>
> On 2/7/08, Duane King <dking at pimpsoft.com> wrote:
> > Brad,
> >  Another advantage to using the speech dispatcher and its API is that a
> lot
> > of
> > wok can be leveraged from it; There is an entire community gathered
> around
> > it
> > already, and its already used in production systems by blind computer
> > professionals like myself, hence why I suggested it to Hemant off the
> list.
> >
> > I would personalky love it if more people joined our little co-oped
> efforts;
> > and by all means your group - or any others - are more then welcome to
> do
> > so.
> >
> > - Duane
> >
> > On Saturday 09 February 2008 09:20:51 am Hemant Goyal wrote:
> > > Brad,
> > >
> > > Maybe we should coordinate our efforts. We are presently working to
> bring
> > > speech synthesis capabilities on the XO.
> > >
> > > We have made significant progress and are documenting our results here
> :
> > > http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Screen_Reader [It is slightly outdated wrt
> the
> > > DBUS speech server, as we are planning to dump that approach and
> instead
> > > use speech-dispatcher]
> > >
> > > At present Assim Deodia is working to improve the eSpeak phoneme data
> for
> > > better voice quality/output on the XO, and I am working on integrating
> > > speech-dispatcher in the XO as a means of providing a simple to use
> speech
> > > synthesis api.
> > >
> > > I have opened a Ticket which might interest you :
> > > http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/6284
> > >
> > > Best,
> > > Hemant
> > >
> > > This posting is very new and, at the moment, consists only of a block
> > >
> > > > diagram of the approach I am proposing.  I have several pages of
> > > > narrative in the works at the moment and I am hoping to post the
> first
> > > > version of it to the Free Speech wiki article sometime this weekend.
>  In
> > > > the meantime, please check out the links in the "See also" section
> of
> > the
> > > > article.  Those linked-to articles contain links to other
> speech-related
> > > > efforts currently underway for the XO (for example, eSpeak).
> > > >
> > > > Cheers,
> > > >
> > > > Brad
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > accessibility mailing list
> > accessibility at lists.laptop.org
> > http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/accessibility
> >
>
>
> --
> -
> Tim
> tim.thelion at gmail.com
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Sun, 10 Feb 2008 12:03:13 +0100
> From: Gilles Casse <gcasse at oralux.org>
> Subject: Re: [laptop-accessibility] Screen reader software -- any
>        progress?
> To: Discussion of accessibility on the OLPC
>        <accessibility at lists.laptop.org>
> Message-ID: <47AED9F1.6090603 at oralux.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
>
> Hi Tim,
>
> Speech-dispatcher is a back-end: it manages speech synthesizers and
> audio output, it does not interfere in fact with the user interface.
>
> The text to be said is supplied to Speech-dispatcher by a client
> compliant with the user interface (text based or GUI).
>
> Available clients today:
> - Speechd-el for a talking emacs,
> - Speechd-up for Speakup,
> - The Orca screen reader can also communicate with speech-dispatcher.
>
> Speech dispatcher offers distinct audio modules: speech can be said via
> Alsa, OSS, NAS or PulseAudio.
>
> Best regards,
> Gilles
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
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