[ntnm] Re: Speakon a-technic news reader
- From: Isaac Porat <isaac@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: ntnm@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 30 May 2014 22:45:21 +0100
Hi Derek
The short answer is that it does not work in the same way, I suggest
that it is very easy to use when you know how it works but you can make
your own mind when I make available the new version which would be
compatible with the latest format changes.
I would be happy to help those who wants to give it a go.
SpeakOn is only available for Windows PC or laptops you can use a
standard keyboard or an external numerical keypad if you wish.
The a-technic news reader constructed linked multi HTML pages local
structure on your computer. This launched your web browser say Internet
Explorer or Firefox and you went up and down the pages (or jumped using
heading navigation) with your screen reader.
I used it for a while some years ago and it did a good job for me
especially with the ability of creating links to a search.
The advantage of the a-technic reader was that you didn't have to learn
anything new beyond using your screen reader. The disadvantage of this
approach at least for me was that it was slow having to drill into a
section and coming back up again. I also did not want to bother with the
website or an email attachment.
SpeakOn is self voicing and a screen reader is not required. It works
mostly like a Windows application but there are some differences.
With SpeakOn you don't have to learn short cuts if you don't want to,
you can operate it if you wish using the Up, Down, Left, Right and Enter
key (some function keys are used for volume and rate adjustments.
SpeakOn can do many things working mostly in exactly the same way but
the following relates to NTNM eText publications.
Firstly you don't have to download from a website or receive the
publications using email, you can do all these automatically from within
SpeakOn itself. This means that you can start to read your favourite
publication within about 30 seconds from the time that you sit in front
of your computer and decide that you want to read say today's Guardian.
What you do within SpeakOn is browse the publications catalogue in its
library and add to favourite the publications you like to read most.
Then when you want to read you simply select the publication and it is
downloaded automatically and SpeakOn starts to read to you in about 5
seconds. You press Enter to start to read and Enter again to stop
reading. You press Left and Right to go between levels of navigation:
section, sub-section paragraph sentence etc. You press Up and Down to
jump according to these levels. So you can navigate and read your
newspaper with one hand drinking coffee with the other.
Reading is much faster than with the a-technic as you don't have to
drill into the sections.
With SpeakOn you can create (in a similar way to the a-technic reader)
a list of articles according to search terms these can be very simple or
complicated for example all article with the name Labour but not Ukip
(no political preference intended).
You can do this again and again with different search terms.
If you read a newspaper half way, when you start SpeakOn again it would
remember where you left off, you can also use bookmarks if you wish.
You can save individual articles and copy section of text or complete
articles into the clipboard.
I suppose you would need to decide if you want to learn something new
and if you want to give it a go.
I am waiting for RNIB to implement some features on their servers which
theoretically should not take long. When done
I would be able to release the new version. Until this is done SpeakOn
is not available for NTNM publications.
The above relates to eText, SpeakOn is able also to stream and download
NTNM audio publications and this feature would be available at the same
time.
Regards
Isaac
On 30/05/2014 20:17, Derek Hornby wrote:
Does speakon work same as a-technic news reader?
I mean from user point of view are they same?
Regards, Derek
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