[access-uk] Software Daisy player
- From: "Brian Hartgen" <brian@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 10 Jul 2004 13:21:38 +0100
Hi
I just want to pass on a personal recommendation if anyone is in the market
for a software daisy player.
People may remember that I was trying to canvas opinion on this subject
about a week ago as I was unsure which player to go for. Well, I have to
say, I have settled on the Victor Reader soft from Visuaide. I think it is
a fantastic daisy player, and very easy to use. I put it to practical use
this week, as I took some RNIB talking books with me while travelling, and
liked the experience of using the player on the laptop and listening to
books that way. Indeed, I probably get more battery life out of the laptop
than I do out of the Victor classic (smile).
It is very easy to set bookmarks, move through headings, through levels, and
the usual things you would associate doing with daisy books. What I
particularly liked was that the program followed usual windows conventions,
so I was able to navigate the menus and learn the various shortcut keys by
doing so.
There are disadvantages though.
1. The help documentation is, perhaps as you would expect, in the form of a
daisy book, and I would have preferred something in text I could read.
2. The jaws support is frankly not very good. There is no verbosity
control, too much speech where you would not expect it to be, and settings
are not remembered across WINDOWS SESSIONS. I have corrected these problems
and slapped in a whole range of new features in some jaws scripts, which
people can freely download from the T&T web site. The help documentation
can also be read there.
3. One of the real advantages with daisy books is that you can create text
notes and other anotations. However, there is no way of being able to have
these automatically spoken as and when they are encountered in the general
course of playback in the book. I would have thought for study purposes
this would have been a terrific idea, to know automatically when important
passages of text were being played or about to be played.
But I have to say I will be buying the product, and you can download a
thirty day demo from the Visuaide web site.
If you want to see how it works, visit the RNIB stand to have it
demonstrated to you. I believe reps from visuaide will also be on hand and
presumably they will have it on a PC for you to try out. Failing that, come
and find me and I'll demonstrate it.
Brian
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