[ossrp-control] Re: What can we really do to think of accessibility from the ground up?

This is both an aesthetic issue and a productivity issue, and the two are 
not the same -- I unfortunately disagree that the most "natural" sounding 
voice is, as you imply, the best for use in a screen reader.  Sometimes the 
more robotic voices can be pushed to higher speeds with a better level of 
understandability than a voice tailored to sound more like human speech.
Case in point: I have Eloquence and AT&T Natural Voices installed on my 
system, and find that while the Natural Voices sound better when listened to 
at a normal speaking speed, when I want to get any real work done, I very 
much prefer the old standby robotic voices.
now a little inflexion does help somewhat, and Eloquence is much easier to 
listen to than some of the very old speech cards, but when I turn on Natural 
Voices and try to speech things up, not only is there much more processing 
going on, which slows down the system, but the rapid speech is harder to 
make sense of.
Does anyone else have this experience?

Now I do like Natural Voices and think they are nice for some applications, 
but definitely not my screen reader.
Just some thoughts.
--le





----- Original Message ----- 
From: "david ingram" <dingram269@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ossrp-control@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, May 31, 2005 6:33 PM
Subject: [ossrp-control] What can we really do to think of accessibility 
from the ground up?


Hi list members,  I'd like to know what can we really do to make sure this
project is taken to the point where we think from an accessibility stand
point from the ground up.  Why not think of all the things that we are able
to do with scripting languages as well as those things that they say can't
be accomplished at this time and put them into a list?  One thing that i
don't want is a machanical sounding screen reading program like what is
currently on windows xp or what i've recently heard when listening to a mac
laptop..  I'd like something that incorporates the voices from the directory
phone voices that are heard.  I don't think that these voices are neither
synthesized nor do they sound robotic in nature.  If I'm not mistaken they
are actually human voices that are put on recordings.  I even remember
hearing these types of voices when calling computer stores or computer
companies and waiting for tech support.  What do you all think of that.

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