Re: A question on Screen Reader Speed Standards

  • From: "qubit" <lauraeaves@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Wed, 9 Dec 2009 12:17:48 -0600

Andreas, not only do all screen readers have different numbers for speed, but 
different synthesizers used by the screen reader speak at different rates for 
the same numbers.  I have never understood the meaning of jaws' speed numbers.  
The scale has changed over the history of jaws, and as I said, the synth is 
where the rubber meets the road so to speak.  All I do is set up the speed as 
fast as it can go and still be completely intelligible, while fast enough to be 
comfortable.  (You said you are sighted; When blind using one of these things, 
you start out at a slow comfortable speed, but learn fast that you really need 
speed or listening can take all day -- so you speed it up little by little, 
till the other people in the room wonder what on earth you are listening to.  
There are also verbosity settings, such as the amount of punctuation to 
include, which of course slows down the word count as the stream is filled with 
syllables for the punctuation.  Different people have different preferences for 
these types of settings.
So, I would say, if you do insert a speed number, it should be something like 
"slow, medium, fast" or something subjective like that.
Is that what you are looking for?
--le

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Alex Hall 
  To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  Sent: Wednesday, December 09, 2009 11:48 AM
  Subject: Re: A question on Screen Reader Speed Standards


  Most screen readers have either a scripting language, which can speak through 
the user's preferences saved by the reader, or an API to make the reader speak 
a string, again according to the reader's settings. You then have SAPI, which 
has its own API.


  Have a great day,
  Alex
  New email address: mehgcap@xxxxxxxxx
    ----- Original Message ----- 
    From: Andreas Stefik 
    To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
    Sent: Wednesday, December 09, 2009 12:26
    Subject: A question on Screen Reader Speed Standards


    Hi folks,

    I'm working right now on trying to build up our cross platform speech 
engines for the Sappy project and am trying, specifically, to get NetBeans to 
store custom preferences related to screen reader speed. On Mac, we basically 
just pass a flag to the TTS engine with a number, which, I suspect, is words 
per minute, although I'm not completely sure. On PC, things appear to be quite 
different and I'm not sure about all of the open source, and other, solutions 
out there (insert your favorite technology here).

    My question is, what would people suggest for standardizing the numbers for 
speed of reading we use for screen readers across all platforms? For example, 
does each screen reader everywhere measure speed in a different way? Should 
just put everything in words per minute and not worry about it, translating any 
screen reader that doesn't comply through some kind of calculation (if 
possible?)? Should we just standardize through some arbitrary metric, like 0 is 
the slowest and 1 is the fastest, then test everywhere to make sure those 
settings are "reasonable" and that the user's system preferences are not 
disturbed?

    To be clear, remember that our tool has to, ultimately, be compatible with 
every kind of screen reader, and should still work for the blind even if no 
screen reader is present (or if the screen reader doesn't work well at all). 
That's why I am asking,

    Thoughts are welcome,

    Stefik

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