Re: A question on Screen Reader Speed Standards
- From: "qubit" <lauraeaves@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 9 Dec 2009 15:22:19 -0600
sounds fine to me, but I do agree with jim, that the user of the screen reader
should control the speed, and your environment could query it for the speed
info, but not attempt to change the speed.
--le
----- Original Message -----
From: Andreas Stefik
To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Wednesday, December 09, 2009 12:45 PM
Subject: Re: A question on Screen Reader Speed Standards
Yaa, I think so, thanks.
So, one thing I was considering doing is basically making speed a number from
0 to 1, where 1 is the max and 0 is the min, which is done quite a bit in audio
processing. Then, on each platform, we'll translate those numbers into
something that particular voice/platform understands. Sounds like, since there
is already so much disparity, having that sort of system wouldn't harm anything.
Anyway, does that sound like a sensible approach?
Stefik
On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 12:17 PM, qubit <lauraeaves@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
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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