Ray I've got Winamp and Windows Media Player, plus Real Alternative and Power DVD. I should think one of those ought to be able to play the samples. They really shouldn't have used a non-standard player, which doesn't appear to be there anyway. Wendy _____ From: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Rays Home Sent: 17 May 2008 19:30 To: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [access-uk] Re: The Blizard Challenge 2008 Wendy, I'm not a fan of Quicktime, but those pretentious Apple folk will use this crappy player which seems to have little keyboard support when I've tried it. (Not an anti-Apple statement , but this is one thing they've not got right! I wonder if I'm getting something wrong though with Quicktime; but I also wonder whether anything else will play these files. Cheers, Ray. ----- Original Message ----- From: Wendy <mailto:w.sharpe@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sharpe Subject: [access-uk] Re: The Blizard Challenge 2008 Léonie I have had a go and found the problems. Apparently they want you to download Quicktime, and as I already have masses of different players on my system I don't want another one. I don't really know what they mean by an embedded player. When you get through to section 1, there are five reference samples, but each line is just plain text with no link or button, so pressing enter does nothing. I don't know why they decided to use this method. I suppose they all have Apple Macs, but many of us don't. I do find this sort of thing disappointing. Now that I am retired I am more than happy to take part in research relating to our needs, but if organisations won't make sites accessible, what can we do? Wendy _____ From: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Léonie Watson Sent: 17 May 2008 17:29 To: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [access-uk] Re: The Blizard Challenge 2008 Afternoon, I contacted them to let them know there were problems. They've acknowledged this and are apparently working on it. Full correspondence is below. Léonie. -----Original Message----- From: Simon King [ <mailto:Simon.King@xxxxxxxx> mailto:Simon.King@xxxxxxxx] Sent: 17 May 2008 15:16 To: secretary@xxxxxxxxxxx Cc: blizzard@xxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: Website accessibility. Léonie Watson wrote: > Afternoon, > > Someone posted up your website to a mailing list for visually > impaired people yesterday. Several of us have tried to undertake the > speech synthesis review, but find that the site doesn't seem to work > with various screen readers. > > If you could provide any help on this, it would be appreciated. > There's a willing audience of visually impaired people very interested > in this field. Thanks. > Hi, we are working on it! The sound is played using an embedded media player, and we need to figure out how to make this screenreader-friendly. We will do our best to get this working, and then get back to you, regards, Simon -- The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336. _____ From: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Peter Beasley Sent: 16 May 2008 16:48 To: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [access-uk] The Blizard Challenge 2008 I am sure some of you will find the article below of interest. I wonder though, why they are afraid to use the word blind and prefer partialy sighted. The Blizzard Challenge 2008 Author: Gareth Halfacree Published: 16th May 2008 Caption: The entrants in the Blizzard Challenge have all finished their engines, so it's up to us to decide if they've succeeded. If you're interested in helping advance the science of text-to-speech synthesis, you're needed as part of the Blizzard Challenge. The Challenge is an annual event hosted by the University of Edinburgh's Centre for Speech Technology Research in which programmers are given 10,000 sentence-length recordings of a person from which they must create a working speech synthesis engine. Once each team has completed their engine, the results are uploaded for people like us to listen to and rate. Speech synthesis is an important technology, and one which gets criminally overlooked in these days of multi-gigabyte storage and the ability to record voiceover artists in high-fidelity. Not only are the text-to-speech engines vital for partially sighted people using screen-reader software that all too often sounds like a cross between Stephen Hawking and a Dalek, but an engine which is as flexible as a real human voice holds the promise of massively improved immersion in games with vast swathes of text being transformed into realistic speech without the need to hire actors and expensive studios. In order to make things easier for the teams involved, the Blizzard Challenge has traditionally used a neutral voice for the basis of the engines - one without a particularly strong accent and as emotion free as possible. This time round, however, the Challenge is to create a working engine from a voice sample which has a lot more personality than usual. While this makes things a lot harder for the programmers, it holds the promise of an engine capable of producing a voice that doesn't sound permanently bored. If your last experience of text-to-voice synthesis was with the Say program on your Amiga 500 Workbench floppy, then you'll be pleasantly surprised by how advanced some of this years entries are. If you want to participate, you can sign up on the project homepage. It'll only take about an hour of your time, and it's well worth it. Do we have any partially sighted visitors relying on screen readers, or are we all just looking forward to seeing the technology to a point where it can be used to put more speech into games like Oblivion? Share your thoughts over in the forums. LINK: Blizzard Challenge 2008 Volunteer Listener Registration http://groups.inf.ed.ac.uk/blizzard/blizzard2008/english/register-ER.html SOURCE URL FOR THIS ARTICLE http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/05/16/the-blizzard-challenge-2008/1 Get your FREE SECURE email account from www.topmail.co.uk