Several people have wandered onto my website looking for information about screen readers for the blind. Screen readers can be very helpful for people with other problems as well, such as dyslexia or just plain eyestrain. I will mention some screen readers for these, but my main focus here is screen readers for the blind.
I claim little authority on this topic. I am posting because I had run across some of these organizations and products when I was looking for assistive technology for a young man with severe cerebral palsy and visual impairment years ago, I remain interested in assistive technology, I use a screen reader myself - though my reasons are not related to vision other than a bit of eyestrain - and a few have asked for more information.
Eventually I will get this better organized, time permitting. For now, this is adapted from the last letter I sent on the topic.
My knowledge mostly relates to Microsoft, Windows and PC’s. However, I am sure there are products that work with the Apple Macintosh computer; I am just not up on any of those. Some of the products I list below – especially the ones that cost money – are likely to have a version that runs on the Macintosh, too.
Some screen readers aim at literacy or dyslexia for sighted users. If you are looking for help for either of these problems, TextHELP! and KeyStone are two examples of software you may want to look into. Developers put a lot of time and effort into making the software work for their target users, so it would be a waste of your money if the software is intended to help with a different problem.
TextHELP! is at:
http://www.texthelp.com/
KeyStone is produced (I believe) by Words Worldwide Limited
(W3), whose website is at:
http://www.keyspell.com/
Microsoft is not the only company that has some accessibility features built into their products, but they are the only ones I have a few links for, so here they are. They are not active by default and most people don’t know where to find information on how to use them. In fact, Windows XP comes with a screen reader. I have tried it and, in my opinion, it isn’t much, but it can be set to read the menu commands for at least some Microsoft Office programs, and the text on the screen as well. One of my frustrations was that I use many programs it did not work with.
Microsoft has an area of their website devoted to
accessibility, at least as it relates to Microsoft products.
There are links to pages targeting problems besides visual
impairments, such as deafness and alternatives to the keyboard
and/or the mouse for input. The main page is at:
http://www.microsoft.com/enable/
Microsoft’s “Resource Guide for People with Visual
Impairments” Web page is at
http://www.microsoft.com/enable/guides/vision.aspx
Microsoft also has links to lists of shortcuts for Windows at
this Web Page:
http://www.microsoft.com/office/techinfo/productdoc/2002/en/mappoint/ALLUseKeyboardShortcuts.htm
Microsoft has speech recognition for navigating menu commands
built into Office XP. I have never tried it. This Web page has
more information:
http://www.microsoft.com/office/evaluation/indepth/speech.asp
Outside of Microsoft, I have found three programs that are
free. If you figure out the shortcut keys for Windows on your
computer (which I have a link to later), you might be able to
make these work for you, but I think they target people who can
see the
screen but have enough visual and/or other issues that having
the screen read to them is a big help. My guess is that the
programs lack features of the more expensive software, but the
price is right for trying them out. If any are usable, great, and
if not, trying them out will help you define what you don’t
want, before you spend money!
The first two free ones are SpeakToMe and TalkPad, both at
http://home.att.net/~hunterz/index.htm
Simply Web 2000 is also free, but it is only designed to work
with Internet browsing and not, for example, with your word
processor. The same company also sells Simply Talker, which is
$100 but has a free 30-day demo. Simply Talker will work with
many different sorts of programs. The Website is:
http://www.econointl.com/
TextAloud MP3, which is what I use, simply reads whatever you copy into it. It is obviously not designed for blind users, as it gives you no auditory cues for changing its settings, and I think it would be difficult to do so anyway using the keyboard only instead of the mouse. Once someone sets it up for you, however, it is possible to use it without being able to see what is on the screen. You just hold down the control key while you press the letter “A” to select everything on the screen, and then the control key again with the letter “C” to copy it. The control key plus the F6 function key will read the text aloud, control plus the F8 function key will pause or resume reading, and the control key plus the F10 key will stop reading. Any pictures or special characters like lines and brackets are simply skipped.
The program attempts to read some abbreviations as the whole word, rendering the letters “Sun” followed by a period as “Sunday,” uppercase “OR” as “Oregon,” and uppercase “IN” as “Indiana.” This occasionally leads to errors, such as the abbreviated form of “Monsieur,” which is “Mon.,” being read as “Monday,” and headings in all uppercase letters having “Oregon” read in place of “OR,” but once you are wise to what it is doing, it isn’t hard to figure out. It also cannot distinguish between the past and present tense of the word “read,” and it consistently reads “wind” with the pronunciation of the word that means coil rather than moving air. You can change the pronunciation of words (or someone could do that for you), but it doesn’t solve these particular problems of words distinguished by context rather than spelling.
TextAloud only costs $24.95, but it is shareware, meaning you
can download it and try it out for free before you buy it. My
review of TextAloud is at:
http://www.mendoclick.com/sharewareTAM.php
There is a link at the bottom of that page to the manufacturer’s Website.
Arkenstone is a respected company that has been around since 1989. Many libraries use the Arkenstone reader to enable blind patrons to read books. It was acquired by Freedom Scientific, another respectable company, in 2000. I talked to an Arkenstone representative (who was herself legally blind from a progressive disorder) at a conference way back in 1992, and they had a great system combining a scanner, optical character recognition, and screen reader. I am certain they have developed along with computer technology and I would have the utmost confidence that their products would work well.
Today Freedom Scientific's JAWS screen reader for Windows looks impressive (under $900), and they have a scaled-down version called Connect Outloud. If you don't have the money for the former, you might consider the latter. As they describe it, “General features of Connect Outloud allow users to surf the web, send and receive email and create documents in the easy to use Freedom Scientific (FS) word processor.”
You may also want to look at Freedom Scientific’s
OPENBook software for using a scanner with the computer to read
printed material. Their website is:
http://www.freedomscientific.com/index.html
Window Eyes looks interesting and targets blind users for
Windows and the Internet. The company was founded in 1990, and
they have a free demo download, so I'd suggest trying it out:
http://www.gwmicro.com/
Whatever you start with, you can use your experience with that to justify an upgrade to something better later, hopefully helping you to get funding. (Often vendors know the tricks to getting funding, and my experience has been that vendors are quite willing to talk to potential customers directly, though it can irritate some professionals in the medical or government establishments.)
I have not thought enough about navigation within a word processor or spreadsheet, so I won’t comment on those. When it comes to the Internet, how well a screen reader navigates the screen depends partly on how the web programmer coded it. I would demand that any screen reader for this purpose be able to give you choices about jumping around the screen so that you do not have to listen to the column or row of navigation links until you want to go to a different page.
The reader should also give you information about pictures on the screen. However, if the programmer neglected to put a picture description in the optional "ALT" tag of code, there won't be any information about the picture there for the reader to read, except perhaps to let you know the picture exists. Theoretically, screen readers should also be able to pick out titles and summaries about "tables" on the screen (and a so-called "table" on a Web page may not look like a table to a sighted person, but it still organizes a group of text or other information), helping you jump back and forth without having to reread the screen from beginning to end. Again, though, it depends on how the web developer coded it.
Web pages can be coded in different languages. The simplest is HTML, which stands for Hypertext Markup Language. It is very basic, allowing text with imbedded links, pictures and sound files, but in and of itself does nothing fancy. This is good for screen readers, as it allows them to figure out what is what and what is where, except that HTML standards are a very new thing, complicating the issue somewhat.
When it comes to Websites coded with embedded JavaScript or applets, I have no idea which screen readers can handle them or how they do so. I would add that to my questions for the vendor to answer.
My point is, spoken language is sequential, but a good screen reader will let you skip groups of text you don't want to hear, as well as jump backwards to them later. It will also let you know about stuff on the page that does not directly translate into spoken output, but this really depends upon the Website developer supplying some descriptive words to go with it.
As an intermediate website programmer, I must admit that my own website probably leaves some things to be desired for blind users, but, like most, I haven't found the time yet to do anything to improve it, though I try to keep its organization simple so it should be easy to navigate. Keep in mind that standards for HTML are new and many sites don't adhere to them yet. Appreciate any features of a screen reader that compensate for the real world.
The National Federation for the Blind has some links to
technology for the blind at:
http://www.nfb.org/tech.htm
IBM has had an "accessibility center" for over 10 years. They
have a web reader listed under "Vision." I don't know any more
than that.
http://www-3.ibm.com/able/
Another potential resource is the Alliance for Technology
Access. If you are lucky enough to have a technology center near
you, there might be something useful to try out there. They are
an organization for people (and families of people) with
disabilities to help them learn about, try out, and get
technology tools. I found them very helpful about 11 years
ago.
http://www.ataccess.org/
Hopefully you already know about the National Library Service
for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS). We used their
branch in Washington State. They are a wonderful source of books
on tape and will loan you a tape player as well. They also have
magazine and other services. Many states have a website for their
version of the NLS, where you will find more good information.
The main site is at:
http://www.loc.gov/nls/
Here are some other Web pages of useful technology links for blind users. I can't give you more information; I'd have to follow the links myself.
Optical Character Recognition Systems -
http://www2.edc.org/NCIP/library/vi/ocr.htm
The Royal Society for the Blind, Adaptive Technology -
http://www.at.rsb.org.au/links/links.htm
The New York Institute for Special Education, Blindness
Resource Center -
http://www.nyise.org/blind.htm
Drifting further from screen readers, but perhaps of some interest are these additional links:
RESNA is a great organization, but they target a wide range of
disabilities. Their purpose is to adapt technology to the needs
of people with disabilities and, equally important, to make it
available. They get involved in legal and funding issues as well
as other things. They also put on some great conferences, and it
is likely that vendors with products for assisting blind people
will have booths there. You can query on both assistive
technology practitioners and providers at their website:
http://www.resna.org/resna/aboutresna.html
American Council of the Blind -
http://www.acb.org/
American Foundation for the Blind -
http://www.afb.org/
General links on disability organizations, some of which
apply, are on this site:
http://www.makoa.org/org.htm
Blinded Veterans Association has some good links and maybe
other information:
http://www.bva.org/index.html
Royal National Institute for the Blind -
http://www.rnib.org.uk/
The Association for Education and Rehabilitation of the Blind
and Visually Impaired (AER) is for professionals that work with
rehabilitation, but that can come in handy when you want to see
what books the professionals are reading, as well as learn what
they had to do to get certified, and other secrets.
http://www.aerbvi.org/welcome.htm
I am sure you know that it helps to find out information on your own as well as talk to professionals in the field. Paid professionals are often too busy to keep up with the latest technology, and software is easy to download these days.
In the end, the only one who can really tell how well it will work is the person who will use it, and to do that, the person needs to try it out and have appropriate help and training. Unfortunately, funding agencies do not always seem to understand this, but even if they do, there is rarely enough money to cover what everyone needs. My best advice is, be persistent and think creatively. What may be out of reach today may be less expensive and easier to obtain in another year or two, so do not give up.
I hope this page has been of some help. Contact me if you would like me to pass on your experiences with or comments about technological tools. Maybe you already have an answer for someone else.
Microsoft, Windows, Outlook, PowerPoint, FrontPage, and Microsoft Office are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
Copyright © 2003-2008 - MendoClick
Revised: July 06, 2005