BlinkTech

2003-11-24T12:57:00.000+13:00

A truly voice only mobile phone.

Owasys, a Spanish company that I tried to check out about 6 weeks ago have finally announced the release of their voice based mobile phone, reviewed in this BBC article.

What I like the look of is the price - 250 UK Pounds, a lot cheaper than the offering sold by Freedom Scientific.

By the looks of their platform and developer kit, this is not the only big news. I think I see another application that will be delivered shortly, the phone providing GPS information in a verbal manner. This could really impact on the great technology done at Pulse Data with their GPS system, which needs their BrailleNote technology to work - a far more expensive solution. 2004 looks like it may be quite an interesting year.

2003-10-02T09:20:00.000+12:00

I read some interesting news this morning that there is a new mobile phone that has been designed especially for the blind and Visually impaired. The phone includes Pocket Babel (from Babel Technologies and is designed by Owasys. Great I thought time to have a look. As you will note I have not placed a link to Owasys here, because the web site is awful from an accessibility point of view. Some flash to start with, a highly graphical page with a link to the english pages (Owasys appears to be a spanish company) that is speech inaccessible, and finally all the news items are in PDF and even my browser Home Page Reader could not convert!

So I Googled instead...

It looks like the product - Owasys22/3C is very new. Out of Spain the company is only just gearing up on the marketing and I could not find a lot of technical details. I think is a GSM network based phone that contains "most" of the standard functionality. A presentation at the RNIB in November looks like the main launch - here is the abstract.

They are quoting that this is the first mobile phone for the blind, but what about the announcement in June of the Nokia 9210i? Here is Vodaphone's News Release.

From my perspective the future looks bright on the mobile phone front, but unles the Owasys22/3C is significabtly cheaper than the Nokia 9210i (with adaptive software, in the region of $800 - $1000 USD) I think I will wait.

2003-09-25T09:03:00.000+12:00

Epson and Fonix Announce New Speech Platform

Still more happening in the area of embedded speech. I think that we will begin to see an explosion in this area over the next 12 months and when the price begins to fall (at about that time), then we should start to see quite a new range of products that will be of use to the blind and visually impaired. The question for today is what daily activities and interaction with "devices" could benefit with a speech output interface?

Here are some links to the press release / news item itself Press box
Press Web
And some techie details at Embedd ed start

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2003-09-11T14:09:00.000+12:00

New Gnome Desktop looks like an Accessibility Winner! BigTime!

I have not tried this out myself yet, but this article - http://arstechnica.com/reviews/003/software/gnome-2.4/gnome2.4-4.html seems to say that finally we can have some serious accessibility built into the desktop without having to spin cartwheels. I have been playing (only very slightly) with Linux over the last few years and have been frustrated with the following problems.

A really small mouse cursor, that is sort of better in later Gnome's but still way too small. Puff and the like I could not get working.

Sound Driver issues, even recently. The latest Red Hat is distributed with a kernal (I need to check the numbering RSN) that had a kernal bug affecting my sound chip set.

IBM very naughtily hiding their version of ViaVoice for Linux so that I had do find "elsewhere".

EmacsSpeak has only recently started to handle software synthesizers, and I have had no real success in getting up and running until recently (see how later on in this diatribe).

Many application seem to ignore my colour settings within Gnome and so I basically gave up using it.

Basic screen readers like SpeakUp seem OK for some folk, but it is so hard to try and get working when you are spending most of your time with your nose pressed to the screen that my speed of work was badly affected and I gave up in frustration.

But in the last couple of weeks there has been some major news that I think means that here is finally some hope to "bootstrap" blinks into the Linux environment.
First off I heard about Gnopernicus and was very excited. I have just this week got a copy of Mandrake to install over the top of my damaged Red hat install - with the sound bug, or patched so that sound works, but no network :-) - and was planning to install mandrake and Gnopernicus this weekend. Now that the new Gnome is out, I will install this instead...

Another very exciting piece of news was a distribution called Oralux that is a Knoppix variant. Knoppix is Linux on a cd that you place in your PC and boot from. Oralux is the same but after booting you are in EmacsSpeak with the Flight TTS engine running!!!! This is really really cool and all I have to do now is learn 4,000 new keystrokes and I will be away

And today comes the news that Gnome 2.4 has Magnifier, screen reader and braille output built in. It never rains but it pours.

Further postings over the next few weeks will be concentrating on these new possibilities. So much to do, so little time....

2003-09-11T08:59:00.000+12:00

Another embedded TTS solution

In a previous post I talked about the cost of embedded text-to-speech.
Today another brick in that wall with some news from Advanced Recognition
Technologies Inc who have a new embedded speech solution. It appears that
this is designed specifically for the cellphone and car market but there
appear some intersting aspects. Firstly this is a software only solution,
which generally means that the price should be a lot lower than a
hardware based solution at this time in the TTS development cycle.
Secondly the platforms are quite numerous and therfore quite portable. I
was surprised to see the size of the TTS engine (without voice files) of
20k! Multiple languages and voices as well I think.
http://www.artcomp.com/index_products.htm

I think I need to also check out the competition to this as I am sure
that there will be a number of competing products of a similar nature.

2003-08-19T10:32:00.000+12:00

Magnification is not the only issue.

To those folk who are not "visually impaired", the thought is that all one
needs to do if you can't see the screen is to increase the size of the
font and all will be well. This can help but imagine being able to only
see a tenth of your screen and to view the rest you would need to scroll
around? Not exactly a great productivity tool. Magnification in small
amounts works well, but the moment it gets to a size that it restricts
your view of the big picture, it actually starts to hinder, slowing you
down. Vision and perception are very closely tied to detail and context.

So what is the answer? Well some of the screen magnifiers firstly allow
the screen to be in one magnification and then a view port, very much like
a magnifying glass around the mouse or caret so that the detailed
information is magnified but overall context is maintained. Zoomtext is an
example of a screen magnification program that allows this, as does MAGic
and I am sure most of the other main stream screen magnifiers. If
interested there is a great site with reviews, news and the like
especially to do with magnification needs - http://www.magnifiers.org.
Note that the stationary magnifiers that sit in a portion of the screen
are next to useless. The viewport needs to follow focus of the mouse and
caret otherwise it is next to useless.

Another option is to add speech as another form of interface to augment
the visual information. The mainstream magnification packages have this as
an option, though adds quite a bit to the cost. Personally I would not be
without speech on my machine any more. The feedback that it gives me on
top of the context that I can get by NOT using too much magnification
makes me a lot faster than the mainstream way that would have me using
more magnification and less speech. Speech for detail and sight for
context. In fact I do not nor will I ever need or use a magnification
program, even though my sight is quite restricted.

Colour and contrast are two aspects of vision that can make significant
difference to how you see, and for those visually impaired that are still
not needing very large magnification, can really make a huge difference. I
am writing this note in an editor where the font is around 15 point, all
scroll bars, toolbars and the like are turned off to give me more screen
real estate, the background is black and the font white. Another really
handy touch is the current line is highlighted in bright yellow (my
choice), so that I do not have to spend ages hunting for the caret and
resorting to the Blinkie salute - the series of keystrokes Home, Shift-End
to help me find the current line.

I am so happy with the differing current line colour that I decided to ask
a couple of software authors to add to some products I use. Three
differing responses.

1. Yep quite simple and I will add to the next release (which was 6 weeks
later). Thanks Zeus Editor.

2. This is not on our current development plan (and by inference never
will be), Just use our wonderful magnification functionality. Hmmmmm

3. "Thank you for feedback, you are a valued customer, we take your input
sseriously and pass the buck to our accessibility department so that one
day, if no-one drops the ball, your feature request will be summarised
considered and just maybe added to our code base just prior to your
retirement." Microsoft has done a great job on accessibility, a really
good one, so please try this one - it really is quite simple....

2003-08-11T22:21:00.000+12:00

View Web Pages Your Way

Custom Style Sheets have been a real saviour for me since I was introduced to them over 4 years ago. I was working with an interface expert, who realised that I was having trouble with the custom colour settings that I was using in Internet Explorer. Eric Williams explained to me that I could create a custom style sheet that would replace the one that web authors had created for their pages, allowing me to view each element of a page in a manner that suited me.

I had a quick hunt on the web and downloaded a starting css file that I then edited a little. I altered a few properties so that headings and paragraphs were displayed in a colour and size that I liked. I then attached to my browser and I have been able to view over 95% of all web pages in a consistent and clear manner.

This is the beauty of style sheets, it divorces content from presentation, allowing people with visual impairments to view the same content but in a completely different and more appropriate form. I have made minor tweaks over the last few years and have generally found them a god-send. They are not perfect, and there are still web pages that do not render well when a custom style sheet is applied (predefined and constant space that doesn't change with font size for example), but I have recently found a way round this and will discuss this in a future post.

here is a site that gives you a starting style sheet and instructions for adding the file to your
browser.
http://www.microsoft.com/enable/training/ie5/css.aspxhttp://www.microsoft.com/enable/

And here is my style sheet that you can copy and paste into a file, save with a .css extension and using the accessibility options within your browser, make your custom sheet as well. Experiment with differing colours and the like. Just remember that you will have to restart your browser after making changes.

------------------ Style Sheet Begins Here ----------------------

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META content="text/html; charset=windows-1252" http-equiv=Content-Type></HEAD>
<BODY><XMP>

medium {
font-weight: normal;
font-size: 6pt;
font-family: "Tiresias LPfont","Verdana", "Lucida", "Arial", "Geneva", "Helvetica", sans-serif;
}

strong {
font-weight: bold;
}

small {
font-weight: normal;
font-size: medium;
font-family: "Tiresias LPfont","Verdana", "Lucida", "Arial", "Geneva", "Helvetica", sans-serif;
}

body {
padding-left: 4%;
padding-right: 4%;
font-weight: normal;
font-size: medium;
font-family: "Tiresias LPfont","Verdana", "Lucida", "Arial", "Geneva", "Helvetica", sans-serif;
background: navy;
}

table,tr{
background: navy;
font-color: white;
}

img{
backgound: white;
}

h1 {
font-size: 3.6em;
color: white;
background: green;
font-weight: bold;
font-family: "Tiresias LPfont","Verdana", "Lucida", "Arial", "Geneva", "Helvetica", sans-serif;
}

h2 {
font-size: 2.8em;
text-align: left;
font-weight: bold;
font-family: "Tiresias LPfont","Verdana", "Lucida", "Arial", "Geneva", "Helvetica", sans-serif;
background: navy;
font-color: white;
}

h3 {
font-size: 2.0em;
text-align: left;
font-weight: bold;
font-family: "Tiresias LPfont","Verdana", "Lucida", "Arial", "Geneva", "Helvetica", sans-serif;
}

td {
font-weight: normal;
font-size: medium;
font-family: "Tiresias LPfont","Verdana", "Lucida", "Arial", "Geneva", "Helvetica", sans-serif;
}

th {
font-weight: bold;
font-size: medium;
font-family: "Tiresias LPfont","Verdana", "Lucida", "Arial", "Geneva", "Helvetica", sans-serif;
}

p {
font-weight: normal;
font-size: medium;
font-family: "Tiresias LPfont","Verdana", "Lucida", "Arial", "Geneva", "Helvetica", sans-serif;
}

input,select,textarea {
font-weight: bold;
font-size: 0.7em;
font-family: "Tiresias LPfont","Verdana", "Lucida", "Arial", "Geneva", "Helvetica", sans-serif;
color: white;
background: black;

}

li {
font-family: "Tiresias LPfont","Verdana", "Lucida", "Arial", "Geneva", "Helvetica", sans-serif;
}

hr {
color: white
}

address {
font-style: italic;
font-size: medium;
font-weight: normal;
font-family: "Tiresias LPfont","Verdana", "Lucida", "Arial", "Geneva", "Helvetica", sans-serif;
}

pre {
font-weight:bold;
font-size: medium;
font-family: "Tiresias LPfont","Conole","Fratiger Linotype", "Courier New", "Courier", monospace;
}

ul {
font-weight: normal;
font-size: medium;
list-style-type: square;
font-family: "Tiresias LPfont","Verdana", "Lucida", "Arial", "Geneva", "Helvetica", sans-serif;
}

ul ul {
font-weight: normal;
font-size: medium;
list-style-type: disc;
}

ul ul ul {
font-weight: normal;
font-size: medium;
list-style-type: circle;
}

li {
font-weight: normal;
font-size: medium;
font-family: "Tiresias LPfont","Verdana", "Lucida", "Arial", "Geneva", "Helvetica", sans-serif;
}

dl {
font-weight: normal;
font-size: medium;
font-family: "Tiresias LPfont","Verdana", "Lucida", "Arial", "Geneva", "Helvetica", sans-serif;
}

dt {
font-weight: normal;
font-size: medium;
font-family: "Tiresias LPfont","Verdana", "Lucida", "Arial", "Geneva", "Helvetica", sans-serif;
}

dd {
font-weight: normal;
font-size: medium;
font-family: "Tiresias LPfont","Verdana", "Lucida", "Arial", "Geneva", "Helvetica", sans-serif;
}

a:link {
color: yellow; ;
background: navy;
text-decoration: underline;

}

a:visited {
color: lime;
background: navy
text-decoration: underline;
}

a:active {
color: #000000;
background: yellow;
text-decoration: underline;
}

a:hover {
color: #000000;
background: yellow;
text-decoration: underline;
}

.new, .error {
font-weight: bold;
color: #FFFFFF;
background: red;
}

.pop {
font-weight: bold;
color: #FFFFFF;
background: green;
}

address {
margin-top: 1.6em;
}

pre {
font-family: "Tiresias LPfont","Console","Verdana", "Lucida", "Arial", "Geneva", "Helvetica", sans-serif;
}

table, tr, th, td, thead, tbody, tfoot
{
display: block !important;
}

</XMP></BODY></HTML>
}

2003-07-18T11:04:00.000+12:00

What is going to happen to embedded Text-To-Speech?

The cost of text to speech has dropped dramatically over the last 5 years. On a PC the cost is pretty much free since Microsoft distributed it's engine on 2000 and XP. I was using this for development prior to this and it was a pretty good engine - especially for the price. On the Linux platform Via Voice can be downloaded and installed. In fact I am pretty much using Via Voice on all my machines (5 different ones all up) and have personally found it the best when the speed is increased.

So when can I start to see affordable TTS consumer products?
Cost and processing have been the two draw backs to date, and it appears that both are just about solved.

There are a number of software based TTS engines that are now available on Windows CE and other embedded OS's (QNX for example). I am pretty sure that the freely available source for Festival speech engine would also port quite simply. Still they do need a pretty powerful processor which is the cost drawback. As is the issue of licensing which is also still quite expensive.

There is recently a single chip hardware solution - the sound is pretty bad, but at 7USD for volume purchases, it certainly heralds a change and some hope that within the next 3 - 5 years, we can begin to see products designed and useable at a more GPP (General Public Price), rather than the current 3 to 4 times the price. Even better, the same product with a speech interface that we all use....

Winbond Chip maker TTS Chip Details

2003-07-03T13:56:00.000+12:00

Visual Verification Techniques - Oops I can't see them.

This article from CNET raises the ugly questions about visual verification methods on web pages so that a web site can be sure that there is a human on the other side rather than some automated spamming machine, and the problems raised by this, for the blind.

This is a sticky question and one that I do not have an answer to. However there are some points that I think are important so that people on both sides of the accessibility argument remain a little more centered.

1. The web is a growing tool that has pretty much equalized the access of information for the blind. If you are sighted, you really have to understand how great it is to be able to read a newspaper or recent article without having to turn cartwheels in order to get it into a format that is readable.

2. Translation of information into an accessible form is now significantly faster than it was even 5 years ago, never mind 25 years back. So jumping up and down and screaming lawsuit lawsuit is only going to get people's back up. People that all us blind folk need, really need, and in general they have been doing a great job in making and keeping web sites accessible. Did you try the web 5 years ago? Even if the screen reader technology would have been good enough most web pages would have been a nightmare, design layout, HTML authoring tools and standards such as alt attribute on image tags are now pretty common place.
Keep the pressure up and the emotions down...

3. Image based authentication is a kludge. It exists because there is still no decent safe and secure online authentication mechanism. One that protects every ones privacy, individuality and is quick and simple.
Microsoft passport may seem a way forward, but are you keen? I'm not yet. Anyway I want more than one "provider" to choose from. Come on you banks and other central holders of information about me - think laterally and find a business model.

4. On a similar subject. Spam is the driving force at the moment for the introduction of visual image verification so get rid of spam and you get rid of the need for such forms of protection. So all you Government based Postal Services, start doing your job again and protecting my mail - I'll pay 1c per email stamp so that I know that my mail will be accepted by my recipients server's.
It looks like this is starting to happen - See this article I got to via slashdot.
http://access.adobe.com/perl/convertPDF.pl

2003-07-03T08:53:00.000+12:00

from Speechtech Magazine

http://www.speechtechmag.com/pub/industry/2172-1.html

...
InternetSpeech and NFB Team to Bring Full Web Access to the Blind

LOUISVILLE, KY - The National Federation of the Blind (NFB) and InternetSpeech, a producer of Web-access by phone, announced their partnership at the NFB convention (in Louisville from June 28- July 4), bringing full Web access to anyone anywhere using a phone.

"People no longer need a computer to surf the Web or check e-mail," said Emdad Khan, president and CEO of InternetSpeech, Inc. "Blind people struggling with inaccessible Web sites, businesspeople away from their desks and seniors afraid to tackle computers can now use the phone to tap the resources of the Internet."

The netECHO service provides unlimited Web browsing and e-mail correspondence for $9.95 a month and the cost of phone calls into the 408 area code. For $19.95 a month U.S. users get five hours of service a month and additional time at five cents a minute. Both programs have a one-time $20 set-up fee.

"The NFB is partnering with InternetSpeech because many blind people do not have effective access to the Internet," said Marc Maurer, president of the 50,000-member blind consumer group. "This program will allow them to step onto the information superhighway for the first time."

...

In my opinion a little of an over sell about bringing the web to the blind for the first time. There are many of us who have been using it for many years, and it has been a Godsend. More and more information in a digital format means more and more equality of access.
I think it sounds great for anyone who has trouble using a PC, unsighted or not.

My issue is that the telephone access via keyboard will be fine for navigation (maybe) but doing emails using a keypad - forget it. Texting has invented a whole new written language in order to get around the shortcomings of the keypad.

The real first browser for the blind was ours here at Pulse Data, where we brought grade 2 braille to the web, meaning that all web pages can be viewed and interacted with using Grade 2 braille, the true language of the blind. Computer braille is just too long winded.

Personally I find Home Page Reader (simple clean interface) and Jaws with IE (clunky, complex but very comprehensive) using speech only just fine - then again I am not a braille user.

2003-06-27T14:05:00.000+12:00

This article from speechteck magazine talks about a bolt on TTS (text-to-speech) device that accepts straight text on serial ports, making it easier to hook to existing output devices, like eletronic signs. Great idea.

Great for the company that uses it as can add automatic voice announcements. I need one of these at my local bus station, so that the human who does the announcement does not forget my bus - as has happened every so often.

2003-06-27T13:33:00.000+12:00

Tiresias font really works for me.

Being an RP Retinitas Pigmentosa) person means I am always looking for better colours and fonts on web pages and in the general use of my computer. Recently I installed the Tiresias font on my machone and wow what a difference! This is a nice clean font designed sepcifically for part-Blinks and is seems to really stand out and improve the contrast of the text from the backfround.
Details can be found at http://www.tiresias.org/fonts/

I have also included it into my customized xtyle sheet, so now all web pages in the world use Tiresias and look great to me :-)