New Linux PDA For Blind People

[Glenn at home]

Ten years ago, I'd said that the government should not mandate accessibility 
into software, but now, it would be so cheap, when the price was spread out 
over the cost of the product to the general public, that I now believe that 
it should be law, that a device needs to be usable with and without a 
screen.
I mean, it may have a screen, but it should be just as easily usable if the 
screen was covered.
I'm guessing it might cost a dollar or 2 over the cost of any particular 
product using software, if it was mandated.
Glenn

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Lorenzo Taylor" <lorenzo at taylor.homelinux.net>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Thursday, March 30, 2006 2:14 PM
Subject: Re: New Linux PDA For Blind People


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The voice in a blind-friendly mainstream product should be no problem for a
sighted person.  If they don't like it, they don't have to turn it on.  It's
that simple.  The concept I'm going with here is that a blind-friendly 
product
won't make a company much money.  This is the excuse given by all the 
companies
out there who are making tons of money off the government agencies and blind
people themselves who can make the sacrifice it takes to buy such a product. 
So
why not make the mainstream product blind friendly at no cost to the 
consumer?
The voice could be turned off by a sighted person if he/she doesn't like it, 
or
better yet, it could be very easilly turned on by a blind person if he/she 
needs
it.  Voice synthesis is extremely cheap to implement now, so it wouldn't 
cost
the manufacturer any additional money to make it work, and it wouldn't 
reduce
the functionality of the device.

As for the open source mandate in MA, I think it's a good idea.  It's the
proprietary nature of screen readers for the unfortunately most popular OS 
that
makes it difficult to work with for some blind people.  The screen readers 
for
Windows are based on proprietary technology and for the most part only work 
with
proprietary technology.  This is changing slightly, but not enough.  This is 
what
makes blind people think the state of MA is doing a bad thing by trying to 
cut
costs by switching to a superior open source technology.  Just think what 
the
state was doing when they forced everyone to use Microsoft formats, or 
Microsoft
forced the state to use their formats, whichever you like.

Lorenzo
- -- 
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