New Linux PDA For Blind People

[David Poehlman]

I just got a wireless headset for my sterio.  It's easy to put in the  
batteries, it beeps when you turn it off and change chanels.  Yes, it  
is on the high side, but it looks like someone was awake.

On Mar 30, 2006, at 3:14 PM, Lorenzo Taylor wrote:

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

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
- --
Keep American Idol great! Vote for Mandisa!
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFELDwiG9IpekrhBfIRAurTAJ9Px4P1N9DM9586a6B0V85BIb7yjQCgh+Fr
dC/+Z2UTJJ7gXnx6334kNUA=
=dq8D
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

_______________________________________________
Speakup mailing list
Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup