Re: KDE Accessibility - sorry, off topic.

[Peter Korn <Peter Korn Sun COM>]

Hi Olaf,

Just a quick comment...
> ...
>
> But screen readers do not help partially sighted users, users with learning 
> difficulties, or people who simply love to have system notifications or IRC 
> messages spoken. kttsd is being used successfully by all these user groups.
>   

Actually, users with a fairly wide range of disabilities use screen 
readers (and especially those that are dual screen reader/magnifiers, 
like most especially ZoomText for Windows) outside of their "core design 
center" of blind users, because they find the functionality useful.  
ZoomText in particular has a significant audience of folks with learning 
disabilities, who use the features of ZoomText highlighting the words as 
they are spoken, and also the AppReader and DocReader functionality (the 
later function re-renders the document content in a specific font & 
size, and scrolls it as it is read in a separate window).

None of this is to suggest that having applications self-voice is a bad 
thing; it isn't!  Nor to suggest that it is better to make your screen 
reader a swiss-army knife of functionality rather than having a set of 
special purpose tools (that's anyway too general a statement to have 
much meaning).  But I do want to point out that the converse is likewise 
a bit general in the other direction...


Peter Korn
Accessibility Architect,
Sun Microsystems, Inc.

> For example, there is a German company that installs KDE-based computers in 
> schools for people with learning difficulties. They are making extensive use 
> of kttsd and the other KDE accessibility aids. The big GNOME technologies 
> such as GOK, Gnopernicus, Dasher and Orca are far too special-purpose to 
> address their needs. They could use a simple on-screen keyboard that responds 
> to mouse clicks, but it is very difficult to set up GOK in a way that 
> supports this. I hope the new on-screen keyboard (SOK) will be fill this gap.
>
> Our strategy for KDE accessibiilty therefore contains two parts:
> 1. Help the GNOME accessibility team to extend their assistive technologies 
> for KDE applications
> 2. Write modular accessibility aids that can be combined to help all those 
> users that are not sufficiently addressed by the GNOME technologies, such as 
> most partially sighted users.
>
> Olaf
>
>
> [ Darragh ]
>   
> > Hello,
> >
> > I'm sorry but out of curiosity I have a quick question.
> >
> > >From looking at the KDETTS page shown below it looks like the plan is not
> >     
> > > to
> > >       
> > necessarily have a screen reader for KDE but to try to get indevidual
> > application developers to include support for speech output via the KDETTS
> > sub-system. I may be reading that wrong. If so, could someone enlighten me?
> > It would seem like an absolutely crazy idea to go down that route so I'm
> > sure I'm missing something.
> >
> > In case I'm not, How do the developers of KDETTS think that developers of
> > applications will know what information needs to be spoken in their
> > applications? Consistancy will go out the window!
> >
> > http://accessibility.kde.org/developer/kttsd/
> > Quote from page:
> > It is hoped that more programmers will begin adding speech capabilities to
> > their KDE programs using KTTS. Eventually, when Qt 4 is distributed, it is
> > hoped that Screen Readers will be adapted to use KTTS.
> > End of quote.
> >
> > Second quote:
> > Provide a lightweight and easily usable interface for applications to
> > generate speech output.
> > End of quote.
> >
> > Quote 3:
> > KTTS -- KDE Text-to-Speech -- is a subsystem within the KDE desktop for
> > conversion of text to audible speech. KTTS is currently under development
> > and aims to become the standard subsystem for all KDE applications to
> > provide speech output.
> > End of quote.
> >
> >
> > Darragh Ó Héiligh
> >      Website development, Application and O/S Technical Support
> >      Website:   http://www.digitaldarragh.com
> >      Email:     d digitaldarragh com
> >      Tel:       +353-87-767-0464
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > gnome-accessibility-list mailing list
> > gnome-accessibility-list gnome org
> > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-list
> >     
>
>