An idea,

[Laura Eaves]

Hi Sean -- Were you at the nfb convention when they demoed the pocket 
kurzweil reader? It was quite interesting -- kind of slow, but they have 
projections of just such a technology, that could be even pointed at objects 
like street signs for a blind person to read... But obviously it still has a 
long way to go for that to happen.
Anyway, it is supposed to be available for several thousand dollars sometime 
next year, so it will be interesting where it goes.
As for operating a GUI, however, I think such a thing would be essentially 
useless as you would really need to still get inside the software to track 
focus and other such things.
At best it would be usable marginally but far from practical.
Just some comments.
--le

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Sean McMahon" <smcmahon at usgs.gov>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Wednesday, July 27, 2005 2:12 PM
Subject: Re: An idea,


They really should have a device that can be trained to understand certain
shapes and just say what they are.  Some which you could point at any visual
serface.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Janina Sajka" <janina at rednote.net>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Wednesday, July 27, 2005 6:05 AM
Subject: Re: An idea,


> Hi, Lorenzo:
>
> Others have responded with reference to what an X server does, and
> doesn't do. I want to respond to two other particular points from your
> message.
>
> Lorenzo Taylor writes:
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA1
> >
> >  ... Gnopernicus, for example, is using libraries that
> > rely on certain information ent by the underlying application libraries.
> > Unfortunately, this implementation causes only some apps to speak while
others
> > which use the same widgets but whose libraries don't send messages to 
> > the
> > accessibility system will not speak.
>
> This is only partially correct. Any applications using those "same
> widgets," as you put it, will speak. There are no exceptions.
>
> What causes them to not speak is that the properties required to make
> them speak have not been supplied. So, Gnopernicus is getting an empty
> string to renderd, which I suppose it dutifully renders as silence.
>
> Fortunately, these are open source applications and we don't need an
> advocacy campaign to resolve these kinds of problems. A solid example of
> this at work is the Gnome Volume Control. It was written with gtk2, but
> the developers did not supply all the relevant property data. So, a
> blind programmer came along one weekend, fixed it, and submitted the
> patch which has shipped with the rest of Gnome Volume Control ever
> since.
>
> Now the next point ...
>
> >  But it occurs to me that X is simply a
> > protocol by which client applications send messages to a server which
renders
> > the proper text, windows, buttons and other widgets on the screen.  I
believe
> > that a screen reader that is an extension to the X server itself, (like
Speakup
> > is a set of patches to the kernel) would be a far better solution, as it
could
> > capture everything sent to the server and correctly translate it into
humanly
> > understandable speech output without relying on "accessibility messages"
being
> > sent from the client apps.
>
>
> As other have pointed out, there's nothing to be gained by speaking RGB
> values at some particular X-Y mouse coordinate location. But, I'm sure
> that's not what you really intend. If I interpret you correctly you're
> suggesting some kind of mechanism whereby a widget of some kind can be
> reliably identified and assigned values that the screen reader can
> henceforth utter. This is the approach with Windows OSM that has been
> used over the past decade, and it's what allows screen readers, like
> JFW, to develop interfaces based on scripts. For instance, Take widget
> number 38,492 and call it "volume slider," and speak it before anything
> else on screen when it shows up on screen, and facilitate the method
> that will allow user to use up and down arrow to change it's value,
> etc., etc.
>
> It is arguable, and has been cogently argued over the past 18 months,
> that the failure of the original Desktop Accessibility Architecture
> promoted by Sun and Gnome was to not provide such mechanisms. A great
> part of the intent of the Orca screen reader proof of concept was to
> provide exactly this kind of functionality. I believe this is now being
> addressed, though I'm not aware any code for newer Gnopernicus (or post
> Gnopernicus) readers is yet released. However, I do fully expect that
> Gnopernicus is not the last word in desktop screen readers.
>
> Janina
>
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