RE: Some stories
- From: "Ken Perry" <whistler@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 9 Feb 2008 20:13:50 -0800
Grin nod I always loved those "How to Faq" papers but I never understood why
they didn't explain what they said.
Ken
-----Original Message-----
From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jackie McBride
Sent: Saturday, February 09, 2008 7:59 PM
To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Some stories
Andreas:
I have a DoubleTalk synthesizer. I can't remember if I was using dos or
win95 at the time, but happened to stumble across the word faq.
The doubletalk pronounced it as 2 syllables, fa (the a of which was
pronounced as a short u) & q. I guess u know what *that* sounded like! My
puter was givin me the verbal version of the bird! I've gotta say it quite
shocked me when it first occurred! It took a bit to figure out what the
offending word actually was. I guess I could (& probably should) have
changed it in the pronunciation dictionary, but it was so damn funny I just
left it. I had to get a new Doubletalk recently cuz the cable on the old 1
bit it & I don't know if RC Systems has changed the way the doubletalk
handles that acronym or not--they may have as I wouldn't put it past kids to
write that in their papers & have the dt read it aloud in class just for the
shock value of it.
Best of luck w/your discertation.
On 2/9/08, Dale Leavens <dleavens@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> I still use soft vert on a DOS machine and some applications but using
> the Votrax PSS RS-232 synthasizer. The synth is a little slow however
> the point I want to make here is that when the letters s h i t in a
> single word or in certain other combinations occur the synth says
> sugar. I don't know if this is a feature of the PSS or Soft Vert
> however having discovered this I had to test every so called sware
> word I could think of all in the interest of good scientific investigation
of course.
>
> Apparently only the one word was considered sufficiently offensive to
> the blind to require preserving our indignity.
>
> I still have a Maryland Computer HP/125 up stairs which worked last
> time I tried it.
>
> Once, in a state of frustration I typed in a message refering to sex
> and travel. The computer responded "Would you like to be on top?". I
> told David Kostician about this, he had sold me the computer, I
> understand from im that he tested this on every subsequent
> installation he came into contact with but apparently never had a
> similar response. Some little humour someone added to the operating system
i suppose.
>
> I will say that I am sometimes offended by the presumptions that
> synthasizer producers tend to make. Many character combinations which
> happen to corespond with the short forms of American states will speak
> the long form of that state name. This is true of scanning in K1000
> and used to be so in Open Book, may be still. CA (C A) may refer to
> any number of things but in the world of the blind it generally is
> spoken California.It doesn't seem to happen so much in things like Web
> addresses. The trouble here is that by making such assumptions it can
> complicate understanding context, maybe a programming variable maybe a
literaal use in a word processing document.
> Somehow it feels patronising to me to have someone make decisions
> about how I should read a two letter sequence. In my business for
> example, the contraction Dr. is more commonly used for Doctor but most
> of my adaptive equipment assumed\s I prefer Drive.
>
> Wel, that is about all the anicdotes I can think of just now.
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "tribble" <lauraeaves@xxxxxxxxx>
> To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Saturday, February 09, 2008 10:03 PM
> Subject: Re: Some stories
>
>
> > Hi Andreas -- I don't have a specific story, but back around 1991 I
> > was using a DOS screen reader Called Vert -- actually the top of the
> > line was called Vert Plus, which I used at work, and at home I used
> > PersonalVert, dubbed "the little PerVert" by those who used it.
> > Anyway, VertPlus used a hardware synth called the Prose card. It
> > was developed by a Swedish computer scientist who used his own voice
> > to define the various sounds of speech which were concatenated to
> > form words. The firmware had many heuristics to make sentences
> > sound natural, but it was not advanced right then (remember 1991 was
> > still pretty primitive in this area).
> > But the result of the implementation had some surprises: First, the
> > synth sounded like it had a Swedish accent, and for that reason I
nicknamed the
> > system "Swen". What was also funny was that the sound of "j" which
> > doesn't occur in Swedish, sounded like "sh" or "h" or even "k" -- so
> > that some words, such as ginger, were quite baffling on VertPlus but
> > clear on PerVert.
> > Second, on the Prose card, certain phrases were pronounced so that
> > parts of the syllables were compressed or altered depending on the
> > heuristics.
> > This
> > led to some bizarre situations in which the synth would read a
> > perfectly reasonable phrase as if it had profanity embedded in it.
> > This made me think
> > that the "pervert" title applied more to VertPlus than Vert. *smile*
> > (Note, there was no profanity actually inserted, but syllables were
> > compressed so that it could be interpreted that way by someone not
> > used to the synth.) For that reason I always used headphones! (One
> > phrase I remember -- an email with the phrase "fudge in cafeteria".
> > I'll let you figure out the result.)
> >
> > As for programming, I used this screen reader only to read emails
> > and text documents and not so much for programming. This because it
> > was not designed for programming and even for text, the command set
> > in those early screen readers was quite awkward. I only bought them
> > because I had a catastrophic problem with my vision, and so lost the
> > ability to read print for some months. But when my vision returned,
> > I went back to screen magnification.
> > Now I again have no print vision yet again but wow, have screen
> > readers ever improved!
> > Good luck on your dissertation.
> > Cheers and happy hacking!
> > --le
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Andreas Stefik" <stefika@xxxxxxxxx>
> > To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > Sent: Saturday, February 09, 2008 7:54 PM
> > Subject: Some stories
> >
> >
> > Hello all,
> >
> > I have recently completed the first draft of my dissertation, which
> > is on blind computer programmers and using audio to program. In it,
> > I've created a special C programming environment, ran a ton of
> > experiments, and written more than any human would probably want to
read.
> >
> > At the very end of my dissertation, I thought it might be nice to
> > include a section, a few paragraphs, on some "classically bad audio
> > interfaces." Does anyone have any stories of interacting with a
> > program, using Jaws or any other interfaces that use audio, that are
> > so comically bad that they have you scratching your head?
> >
> > I would love to hear some stories, if folks wouldn't mind sharing.
> > (The funnier the better)
> >
> > Just curious,
> >
> > Andreas
> > __________
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> >
> >
> > --
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> > 8:12 PM
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>
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>
--
Jackie McBride
Please join my fight against breast cancer
<http://teamacs.acsevents.org/site/TR?px=1790196&pg=personal&fr_id=3489>
& Check out my homepage at:
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