Screen readers are software programs that allow blind or visually impaired users to read the text that is displayed on the computer screen with a speech synthesizer or braille display. A screen reader is the interface between the computer's operating system, its applications, and the user. The user sends commands by pressing different combinations of keys on the computer keyboard or braille display to instruct the speech synthesizer what to say and to speak automatically when changes occur on the computer screen. A command can instruct the synthesizer to read or spell a word, read a line or full screen of text, find a string of text on the screen, announce the location of the computer's cursor or focused item, and so on. In addition, it allows users to perform more advanced functions, such as locating text displayed in a certain color, reading pre-designated parts of the screen on demand, reading highlighted text, and identifying the active choice in a menu. Users may also use the spell checker in a word processor or read the cells of a spreadsheet with a screen reader.
People are people no matter how they “see”. And, apps are helping people level the playing field and be more independent. We’re going to focus on 5 mobile apps for the blind that have really made a difference. Related: 9 Apps for Accessibility Technology 1. LookTel: The Money Identifier Mobile App.
Screen readers are currently available for use with personal computers running Linux, Windows, and Mac, IOS, Android, and more. Each screen reader incorporates a different command structure, and most support a variety of speech synthesizers. Prices range from free to $1,200.
Screen readers are used mainly by people who do not have useful vision to read text on the screen. A screen reader can also be the product of choice for someone with vision that is useful for travel, but not for reading. In the long run, learning to listen to speech output will prove more productive for such individuals than struggling to read text while leaning close to the computer screen.
Here are some questions to ask when purchasing screen readers:
BRLTTY
Screen reading program that allows a blind person using a refreshable braille display to access the Linux/Unix console (when in text mode). Drives the braille display and provides complete screen review functionality. Incorporates some speech capability.
CakeTalking
Software that provides a set of customized configurations for the JAWS for Windows screen reader that allows blind musicians to use both basic and advanced features of Cakewalk SONAR, a music editing and recording program. Includes extensive tutorials in the form of Word documents written for the JAWS user.
CDesk Compass
Screen reader and magnification software program that can be installed on a computer for blind, low-vision, and seniors to allow users to access to the most-used functions of their computers.
COBRA
Screen reading software program that provides access to information on a computer for people who are blind or visually impaired and converts important information from the computer screen into speech, braille or magnified form. Available in three versions: COBRA Zoom, which provides large print magnification and speech output; COBRA Braille, which provides speech output and support for more than 70 braille displays; and COBRA Pro, which includes everything.
Dolphin Guide
All-in-one software suite with built-in large print and speech access. Designed to be easy-to-use and easy-to-learn.
Eye-Pal® Ace
Portable battery-operated and braille-compatible screen reader and scanner with a built-in screen for displaying photos, magnifying small objects and enlarging texts for individuals who have difficulty reading printed text.
Eye-Pal® Ace Plus
Portable scanner, reader, and video magnifier in one lightweight, battery-operated device. Has a simple one-button, spam-free, email system. Has a built-in WiFi that allows user to connect to Bookshare and NFB Newsline and download books and access publications.
Eye-Pal® ROL (Read Out Loud)
Lightweight, battery-operated, portable scanner and reader that comes with a pair of headphones that easily plugs into the front of the device for privacy. The ergonomic thumbwheels and tactile controls are intuitively located for ease of use. Braille-display compatible for reading a book or a menu at a restaurant or filling out a form at the doctor's office. Incorporates the AudioMinder technology, allowing the user to set an alarm and record appointment reminders.
Eye-Pal® Vision
Fast, accurate, and easy-to-use scanning and reading appliance that connects to a monitor or TV to display text in a high-contrast, large font so user can read along as the content is spoken. May be used for scanning a printed page, pill bottle, recipe card, or newspaper. Motion detector automatically senses when a new page is placed under the camera.
iMax for Mac
Screen magnification and screen reading software for Mac users. Provides magnification, contour enhancement and pointer settings as well as screen reading with high-quality speech output. In addition to text to speech voices, such as Infovox iVox by Acapela, it comes with automatic language identification in the screen reader mode and GhostReader, an application for reading documents. GhostReader contains shortkeys for fast and easy access to the text and the user can listen to documents including file types such as Text, Word, HTML, PDF, ODT or RTF. Also allows user to save texts as Mp3-files to be played in iTunes, be uploaded to an iPod, iPad or burned onto a CD.
JAWS (Job Access with Speech) for Windows (Professional)
Screen reader that provides speech and braille output for the most popular computer applications. Works with Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer, Firefox, and much more. Features two multilingual synthesizers: Eloquence and Vocalizer Expressive; talking installation; built-in free DAISY and Player and full set of DAISY-formatted basic training books. Supports Windows® 8.1 and Windows 10, including touch screens and gestures, and includes support for MathML content presented in Internet Explorer that is rendered with MathJax and fast information look-up with Research It. Convenient OCR feature provides access to the text of PDF documents. Fully compatible with MAGic screen magnification software, and OpenBook, scanning and reading program.
JAWS (Job Access with Speech) for Windows (Standard)
Screen reader that provides speech and braille output for the most popular computer applications. Works with Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer, Firefox, and much more. Features two multilingual synthesizers: Eloquence and Vocalizer Expressive; talking installation; built-in free DAISY and Player and full set of DAISY-formatted basic training books. Supports Windows® 8.1 and Windows 10, including touch screens and gestures, and includes support for MathML content presented in Internet Explorer.
NVDA (Nonvisual Desktop Access)
An open-source Windows screen reader. Uses the eSpeak speech synthesizer and SAPI 4 and SAPI 5 synthesizers.
Orca
Free, open source screen reader for the GNOME desktop. Works with OpenOffice, Firefox, the Java platform and other applications.
Speakup
Screen reader for the Linux operating system. Allows users to interact with applications and the GNU/Linux operating system with audible feedback from the console using a speech synthesizer and to navigate around the screen using typical screen review functions such as “say word,” “say line,” “announce cursor position,” and more. Licensed under the GPL, the GNU General Public License.
System Access
Provides screen access to Windows, as well as applications, including Microsoft Word, Outlook, Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, Adobe Reader, and Skype. It can be installed on two computers.
System Access Stand-alone Mobile
Provides screen access to Windows, as well as applications, including Microsoft Word, Outlook, Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, Adobe Reader, and Skype. It can be installed on two computers. Also includes a smart drive so users can create a key to install System Access on other computers.
Thunder FreeFree screen reader for Microsoft Windows Windows XP Service Pack 3 or later, including Windows 7 and 8. It is not open-source, but it is free for individuals and organizations. Distributed with the WebbIE set of programs, which provides a text web-browser, a podcatcher, an RSS news reader and other tools.
VoiceOver
Screen reader built into Apple computer operating systems (Mac OS X 10.4 and later). Provides a comprehensive audible description and complete keyboard-based navigation and access to a variety of applications, such as web browsing, e-mail, word processing, iTunes, chat, PDF reader, media player, and chess. Also includes support for many braille displays.
ZoomText Fusion Print PagePlease Note: Your browser does not support JavaScript. Some website functions may not work.
Screen magnification and screen reading software that provides the features and benefits of ZoomText Magnifier/Reader, plus a complete screen reader.
Author: Stanford University
Contact : stanford.edu
Published: 2015/02/11 (5 years ago) - Updated: 2015/02/18 (5 years ago).
Synopsis:
Touchscreen Braille writer is an app that turns an iPad into a tool for blind and visually impaired people.
Main Digest
A touchscreen Braille writer developed during a Stanford engineering summer course is now an app that turns an iPad into an invaluable tool for blind and visually impaired people.
Braille may be produced by hand using a slate and stylus in which each dot is created from the back of the page, writing in mirror image, or it may be produced on a braille typewriter or Perkins Brailler, or an electronic Brailler or eBrailler. Interpoint refers to braille printing that is offset, so that the paper can be embossed on both sides, with the dots on one side appearing between the divots that form the dots on the other. Using a computer or other electronic device, braille may be produced with a braille embosser (printer) or a refreshable braille display (screen).
Three years ago, Sohan Dharmaraja was a Stanford engineering doctoral candidate in search of his next project when he visited the Stanford Office of Accessible Education, which helps blind and visually challenged students successfully navigate the world of higher education.
He was getting ready to become a mentor in a summer programming course for undergraduate students, an event organized by the Army High Performance Computing Research Center at Stanford.
The only charge handed down by the course organizers, Dharmaraja recalled, was to 'do something on a tablet.'
He noted, 'The people in the Office of Accessible Education were perplexed about why I was there. Visual impairment and tablets don't obviously go together, but when they showed me a Brailler - the laptop-like computer that the blind use to type documents - I said, 'that's it!' And the rest just fell in place.'
A touchscreen Braille app undergoes testing in Sri Lanka. (Courtesy Sohan Dharmaraja.)
A Brailler is an indispensable tool to blind and visually impaired people, allowing them to type documents and notes, and to send and receive email.
Building a prototype
Dharmaraja teamed with Adrian Lew, a Stanford associate professor of mechanical engineering, and Adam Duran from New Mexico State University to create the prototype flat-screen Brailler. That prototype, created in two months, caught the world's attention, making headlines from Wired to the BBC.
It is a long journey from a simple albeit exciting prototype developed quickly in a summer course to a finished app that's ready for the prime time of the hyper-competitive app store.
Though it has taken Dharmaraja and Lew a couple of years to hone, test and perfect their creation, the full-blown iPad app, known as iBrailler Notes, is now available to the world. The basic version of the app is free.
'Creating a prototype is relatively easy when your audience is a handful of fellow classmates. We did it almost as a whim to see if we could do it,' Dharmaraja said. 'But creating a real app, that potentially millions might rely upon every day, is a whole other ballgame.'
Lew added, 'We think the time was well-spent to get it right.'
Compared to the remarkable breadth of capabilities of most tablets and smartphones, a Brailler is relatively narrow in function, and most cost thousands of dollars. Now, with an iPad and an app, the blind have capabilities many never dreamed possible.
Typing is only a third of what people really want to do on a computer, Dharmaraja said. Ideally, the user would be able to not only create documents, but to edit, cut, paste, and move pieces of text around, as well. In a big, multi-page document, that is not an easy thing to do, even for a sighted person.
'We constantly pushed ourselves to innovate because being born with a disability shouldn't mean you get left out of today's technology revolution,' Dharmaraja said. 'When you see the smile of someone doing something that you and I take for granted, it's motivating.'
One of the biggest benefits of iBrailler Notes is how the keyboard works. To locate keys, users simply hold their fingertips anywhere on the glass surface of an iPad - the iBrailler then draws the keys around the fingers.
Fast, multiple formats
Like a traditional Braille writer, iBrailler Notes uses a series of eight keys - one for each fingertip. If the user gets disoriented and loses track of the keys, recalibration is as easy as lifting the hands off the glass and putting them down again. The app will again automatically orient the keys to the fingertips.
Other advanced features include a clever undo/redo function that requires a simple clockwise or counterclockwise twist of a single fingertip against the glass. There's one-click Google access. Using the iPad's accessibility tools, iBrailler Notes provides search results by speech for users who would otherwise have no way to read the results.
The app also accommodates multiple Braille formats, including mathematics and scientific as well as other languages. Braille systems the world over are notoriously complex - there is no single standard. Every country, every language, every profession has its own way of doing things.
'The iBrailler is the fastest, most capable Braille writer out there,' Lew said.
In almost every way, the app is unrecognizable from the raw prototype Dharmaraja and Lew demonstrated to a stunned crowd at Stanford a few years ago. Everything has been re-thought from the bottom up.
Coding well-vetted
Soon after the summer course ended, Dharmaraja earned his doctorate and returned to his native Sri Lanka to work on the app, which he then dubbed Brailler Notes. He became a fledgling CEO and quickly hired a team of blind and visually impaired Sri Lankans to be his testers. This team was no ordinary group of testers, however. An average blind person in the West has had at least some introduction to technology, but not so in Sri Lanka.
'Our testers did not know what a tablet computer or a touchscreen was, much less how to use them. We had to teach them how to use a touchscreen before they could tell us how to improve our products,' Dharmaraja said.
This turned out to be a good thing for the development team members. When they wrote code, they'd have the testers try it on the tablets. The testers would then provide feedback, often in no uncertain terms.
'We'd proudly hand some new code over and they'd promptly tell us it was, well, not very good, only they used different terminology,' Dharmaraja said with a laugh.
In creating the iBrailler, the team had help from testers at San Francisco's Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired and a testing group from the Employers Federation of Ceylon. The project also received support from the National Science Foundation of Sri Lanka.
Similar Documents
For further related information see our full list of Disability Apps Documents.
If you use an RSS feed reader you are welcome to subscribe to our latest Disability Apps publications.
Comments are closed.
|
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
January 2023
Categories |