[bcab] Re: WebAnywhere: a free screen reader accessed via the

Yep Vince, exactly that audience, but in the main this type of user requires a 
different way of controlling the access for example the ability to highlight 
text with the mouse and have it read outloud without the additional structural 
information that you typicly get with a screenreader in the VI sense of the 
word. There are quite of few of such products around from basic browser 
plug-ins for little or no money, to products equivalent to the big 
screenreaders which work locally as well as on the web.  There's often a 
perception that if it talks it will be better than sliced bread for anyone who 
can't access traditional print no matter what the reason but actually different 
people have very different requirements in a solution depending upon the 
reasons they require them.


Adrian Higginbotham
Project manager: Learning services
Becta
Tel: Direct dial 024 7679 7333 - Becta switchboard 02476-416994.
Email: Adrian.Higginbotham@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Web: http://www.becta.org.uk/
BECTA, Millburn Hill Road, Science Park, Coventry, CV4 7JJ 


-----Original Message-----
From: bcab-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:bcab-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of 
Vince Thacker
Sent: 28 April 2008 12:43
To: bcab@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [bcab] Re: WebAnywhere: a free screen reader accessed via the

Adrian,

I take your point, but suspect that there might be quite a large target 
audience for this kind of provision among partially sighted people, dyslexics, 
dyspraxics and those who have other conditions that result in visual tiredness. 
Not to mention people like myself who for a long time didn't realise I was 
struggling on while I could have been registered as blind. Such people may not 
be habitual screen reader users, but could find it very helpful for this kind 
of technology to be available occasionally.

Vince.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Adrian Higginbotham" <adrian.higginbotham@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <bcab@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, April 28, 2008 9:38 AM
Subject: [bcab] Re: WebAnywhere: a free screen reader accessed via the


> Sounds pretty much like ReadSpeaker which is also free to the end user but 
> has a cost for the site owner and requires that they subscribe to the 
> service.  Same technology different application.  Personally I've always 
> been unclear as to the intended audience for applications which add 
> screenreader like capabilities to the Web but only on the assumption that 
> you can get as far as the Browser or target website without them.  If you 
> needed that degree of functionality you'd find it very difficult to get to 
> a given site without assistance especially on an unfamiliar machine where 
> you might not be aware of where you are starting from EG the desktop or a 
> log-in screen.  If you areteh sort of user who can get around unaided but 
> might want some help with reading detailed or lengthy text, announcing 
> complex or contextual words then this is different to a VI type 
> screenreader.
>
> Adrian Higginbotham
> Project manager: Learning services
> Becta
> Tel: Direct dial 024 7679 7333 - Becta switchboard 02476-416994.
> Email: Adrian.Higginbotham@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> Web: http://www.becta.org.uk/
> BECTA, Millburn Hill Road, Science Park, Coventry, CV4 7JJ
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: bcab-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:bcab-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On 
> Behalf Of Simon HARPER
> Sent: 25 April 2008 16:02
> To: bcab@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [bcab] Re: WebAnywhere: a free screen reader accessed via the
>
> Hi Guys,
> So as far as I'm aware WebAnywhere is for use on machines - mainly public 
> machines when there is no access to USB or CD for security purpose; and 
> for situations such as kiosks etc. It works by generating Speech for an 
> http session on the server side and encoding it as MP3 - then sends it to 
> the client via JavaScript calls coded into the page by a proxy. It's some 
> pretty cool Web Engineering especially because the latency is not 
> noticeable as their encode and send algorithms are leading edge.
>
> Cheers
> Si.
>
> ====
> Simon Harper
> University of Manchester (UK)
>
> Human Centred Web Lab: http://hcw.cs.manchester.ac.uk My Site: 
> http://hcw.cs.manchester.ac.uk/people/harper/
> My Diary (iCal): http://hcw.cs.manchester.ac.uk/diaries/SimonHarper.ics
>
>
> +----------------------[ NEW &
> INTERESTING ]--------------------------------------+
>   W4A2008 Beijing            . 21-22 Apr 2008 . http://www.w4a.info
>   WWW2008 Beijing            . 21-25 Apr 2008 . http://www.www2008.org
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>   ASSETS 2008                . 13-15 Oct 2008 . http://
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>
>
> On 25 Apr 2008, at 13:03, Michael Whapples wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 2008-04-25 at 02:03 -0400, BCAB_Digest@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>>> Subject: [bcab] Re: WebAnywhere: a free screen reader accessed via
>>> the
>>> web
>>> Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 14:55:20 +0100
>>> From: "Adrian Higginbotham" <adrian.higginbotham@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
>>>
>>> SaToGo isn't open source no.
>>> NVDA is open source and while it isn't web based it is portable so
>>> can
>>> be run from a usb stick or CD so can easily auto start without any
>>> keyboard interaction at all.
>>> http://www.nvda-project.org/
>> WebAnywhere is opensource as well, although the indications from
>> what I
>> have read is that it hasn't always.
>>>
>>> Would be nice if nvda and web anywhere worked together to save
>>> duplicating work.
>> Might be good, but that is one of the advantages of open source, they
>> don't need to actually work together, the other can always learn by
>> looking at the code and taking anything that looks good (I don't know
>> which open source license WebAnywhere is under, and it might make it
>> harder for the two to mix if it is GPL incompatible). This then means
>> that they may go slightly different ways, but not actually be creating
>> all the stuff themselves. Yes it is better if they work together to
>> help
>> understand what they are trying to do, but it isn't as necessary as it
>> might be for closed source software.
>>>
>>>
>>> Adrian Higginbotham
>>> Project manager: Learning services
>>> Becta
>>> Tel: Direct dial 024 7679 7333 - Becta switchboard 02476-416994.
>>> Email: Adrian.Higginbotham@xxxxxxxxxxxx
>>> Web: http://www.becta.org.uk/
>>> BECTA, Millburn Hill Road, Science Park, Coventry, CV4 7JJ
>>>
>>>
>>
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