[laptop-accessibility] just a test...
Gary Kline
kline at thought.org
Wed Jan 16 00:10:06 EST 2013
On Wed, Jan 16, 2013 at 10:56:18AM +1100, Kate Anderson wrote:
> Hi Gary,
hi kate,
I just read my old email below. I rarely do because some of the
techie lists insist on "additional writing at the BOTTOM/" and
are quite upset if this convention is not followed.
long-story-short, I forgot about adding my "Options/SetVoice"
code. it changes the gender and speed words/minute, voice pitch,
and something else. since I wrote VBC/vbc in parts, I had this
code in a separate directory. I would have bet my life that it
was included. nope. thus, vbc has an additional 700 lines of C.
the entire thing in in C with gtk. last week I discovered that
my voice stuff crashes when I hit the Close button. note than I
may have a working version somewhere. but, unless the
speech-impaired version wants a male voice, vbc still needs work.
darn!
> First up, can I say thanks for investing your time in this project. I'm an
> Australian speech therapist specialising in speech generating devices (SGDs)
> for kids and adults with a disability. And although there's a lot of
> expensive custom-build devices and a lot out there for the iPad, there's
> really very little cross-platform programs available, especially ones that
> are open-source.
hm. my physiatrist --- now home on maternity leave {just had a
girl 7 days ago, :_) } --- used her ipad's keyboard and said there
was a speech app. but she didnt have it. I said to forget it;
that my program would be better.
please 'cuse my telling you what you almost certainly know, but
my REAL reason for hacking this thing was the large, ugly-yellow,
heavy POS box, an SGD, that costs $11-13,000. the woman who
showed me this device kept her hands close beneath it. I have a
strong grip in my left hand but still could barely lift the thing.
it has a hard touch keyboard. not sure if it was QWERTY.
probably. I think it beeped every time the plastic area was
toucheed. back in '03 or whenever it was $9000 US. =BUT= it
does dim your lights! --im not easily riled, but I'll tell you
straight out that I was =bEYOND= pissed after I saw that box the
first time. second time: new docs, new hospiral, and +2000 bux
more. it took awhile of being reminded by my pain doc. the one
who is the new mother. and a year of working with months off
to get my tiny networks fixed. but it's working. well, modulo
the voice-part. if you'll point your browswer at
http://www.thought.org/vbc , you'll get an idea of what it
looks like.
> I've been working on a similar project for the past 3 years
> now, but finding time to program is really hard and neither myself nor my
> partner do it professionally, so it is very much a case of trial and error!
do you have a linux or bsd system? if your program is written
in C, C++, or even perl, I can grok it pretty easily. I am
learning, via MOOC, python. somebody wrote me a key-click
program that works on any std keyboard. it is written in python,
tho. I barely know python ... so I'm learning it. for me,
I need some kind of feedback to let me know if I have pressed the
keys hard enough. have a nnice, meaty THUNK does the trick.
the catch is that this key_click.py thing sucks up the CPU. So
after ive got python nailed, I'l port key_click.py to keyclick.c
cant you just see the sun shining and the birds singing?
> With regards to your documentation, I would suggest that uptake will be most
> optimal if the program is fairly self-explanatory, and easy for the kids
> themselves to customise to their own needs (without relying on an adult, or
> someone with unimpaired physical ability).
this occurred to me too. one, docs are the first thing I toss.
I hate wasting time reading documentation; I figure that if I cant
figure it out by using it, it isnt worth very much.
--the one thing the kids will have to master is how to use vi.
vi or vim or, for VBC, gvim, IS THE Only editor you can use
with one hand. bill joy was writing vi when I started at Cal;
he saw that I only had use of one hand and designed vi so you
could use it with just the <Esc> key and other keys. Still,
in my menu, Help/Gvim has a cheat-sheet of one shorten page.
Eventually, I'll expand. and the user has the computer or
tablet or <<whatever>> plugged into the net, he'll be able to
mouse-click and reach TONS of stuff on vi/vim/gvim. using the
editor is the hardest part. I got a late start in everything; I
was 33 before I finally found where I fit--computers--and
began my studies. I figure that, given a small computer that
can be used for things other than communication, kids will be
willing to invest the hour or so that it takes to learn g[vi]m.
I'll mail you the file that I found and edited. im open to
any suggestions.
> In my experience, families and
> school-teachers rarely have the time to trawl through the extensive manuals
> that often come with a complex SGD . Video tutorials are received very well,
> especially if they can be downloaded or watched on a mobile device. I'm
> recording training videos for a commercial SGD currently, and have been
> using Camtasia, but even Camstudio (freeware) will do a good quality dynamic
> screen-capture for walk-though purposes. It's dead easy to use, too!
it was only a week or two ago that I thought of having a video!
ii was watching a video of noam chomsky when he was talking about
something that piqued my interest in =Something= that required me
to watch a how-to video. it hit me like a bolt of lightning:
with VBC, I could have a video! my days of learning how to program
were decades ago. I know very little about audio; I know 0.0 about
video. my daughter has created a video or two for her schoolwork,
and it sound as tho you could fill that part expertly if you wanted
to. my picture scares rats and vampires, so no camera for me.
having fessed up to that, what do you see that a youtube video
could do. as-is, vbc is fairly simple to use.
click a button and gvim poops up, ready for the user to type into.
after "<Esc>:<Enter>" and the computer speaks using espeak. after the
voice speaks, a clean gvim window pops up, ready for typing into
then the other person/people talk, followed by the user.
clicking the Quit button clears the screen.
>
> Also, what access options have you considered beyond direct (touch)?
do you mean typing? there was something on public radio about
a free or low-cost method of having peoples' eyes being tracked.
looking at an A toggles the letter "A"; when the eyes look at B,
the computer activates "B". iwasn't listening that closely, but
this is being developed for everyday uses. eye-tracking-with-
camera is a mature technology, but I think it's still pretty
pricey.
if someone had a mouth stick and an easy-touch keyboard, that
might be an option.
here's one for you:: do you know shorthand or if a person with
one hand can do shorthand? that's another way of accessing the
computer.
finally, vi has the feature where you can hand-code abbreviations.
in you create thr file .exrc and put
ab I I
ab thr there
ab r are
ab f of
ab u you
ab hw
you can save about 31% of your keystrokes by typing the ab.
so typing: "hw r u?" would be rendered "how are you?" After the
:wq {or} :x, the words are spoken.
> Interested to know how you went with this, we're finding it tricky!
>
> Good luck - looking forward to seeing the finished product!! :)
>
> Cheers,
> Kate Anderson.
>
Appreciated your email. I'm interested in your work too.
this much is the cold truth: if I hadn't found computers, the odds
are that I wouldnt be here!
take care,
gary
>
>
> On 8/1/13 11:06 AM, "Gary Kline" <kline at thought.org> wrote:
>
> > On Tue, Jan 08, 2013 at 07:03:52AM +0800, Allan E. Registos wrote:
> >> Hi.
> >
> >
> > hi!
> >
> > according to your email and TZ, you are from somewhere in the
> > Phils, if I'm not mistaken. my wife was born there. [ just
> > intro. chatter. ]
> >
> > about ten years ago when I was at a local hospital here in Seattle,
> > the speech therapist showed me a Windoze box with a touch keyboard,
> > batteries, and speaker. I only have one working hand and could
> > barely heft the thing. it was difficult to use even tho I have
> > been using a typewriter or computer keyboard since my youth. my
> > thoughts then were that with a little hacking, I could buy a
> > smallish laptop and develop a graphic tool for the speech-
> > disabled {or mute}. the affected person would listen to his
> > friend(s) who were talking, and reply by having the computer be his
> > voice.
> >
> > I was already laid-off from a work injury and going to school in
> > a completely different field, so I never did anything except
> > outline my plans and continue with my schooling. ---The nutshell
> > of the story is that given 6+ month hacking in C and teaching
> > myself gtk ---AND having lots of help with the gtk suite, I
> > recently completed my project.
> >
> > VBC {Voice-by-Computer} requires espeak, gtk, and vim/gvim. But
> > it does essentially what I thought of those years ago--2003 or
> > '04 or '05--whatever it was.
> >
> > I talked to some hacker at Galluadet University who was
> > volunteering his time of the "one child per computer" project;
> > I also talked to another person or two. This was around '07 or
> > '08; there was definite interest in my project. I promised to
> > get back in touch when/if I ever finished the project.
> >
> > It's done. I dont know what version--possibly 0.20 to 0.35.
> > It works. VBC runs on any Unix/linux/android--[i think android]
> > tablet. I have run this domain, thought.org, for over 25 years
> > and gone thru dozens of used and homebrew hardware; I have
> > suffered many crashes; recent ones cost me former email backups.
> > So I have lost my record of who I was emailing at laptop.org.
> >
> > Need help.
> >
> > thanks much!
> >
> > gary kline
> >
> >
> >
> >> ----- Original Message -----
> >>
> >> From: "Gary Kline" <kline at thought.org>
> >> To: "Accessibility Laptop List" <accessibility at lists.laptop.org>
> >> Sent: Tuesday, January 8, 2013 6:58:30 AM
> >> Subject: [laptop-accessibility] just a test...
> >>
> >>
> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/accessibility
--
Gary Kline kline at thought.org http://www.thought.org Public Service Unix
Twenty-six years of service to the Unix community.
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