Thread Subject: Re: Braille Displays

From: Jim Tobias
Date: Mon, Nov 20 2006 8:45 AM

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Allen, I think you just invented a new and very useful piece of AT! Imagine
software that was intended to work on captions and description such that a
user could play a piece of media and receive the alternates as synchronized
in production, and also independently control pause/rewind/fast-forward,
etc. for the media stream as usual, but also for the alternates.
Essentially an extension to screen reading software that made them
accessible media players.

It remains to be seen whether the federal government could require
compatibility with such a media player.

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Jim Tobias
Inclusive Technologies
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Hoffman, Allen [mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ]
> Sent: Monday, November 20, 2006 10:07 AM
> To: TEITAC Audio/Video Subcommittee
> Subject: Re: [teitac-video] Braille Displays
>
> Debbie Cook wrote:
> "Braille displays are merely another output mechanism for
> screen readers in the same manner as synthetic speech. They
> don't currently have any functionality outside that construct
> although they could. So, any captioning that is available to
> screen readers could be rendered either in Braille or speech.
> This is partially why I encourage the accessibility of
> captioning for example even htough screen reader users are
> not primary users. But if you want to deliver captioning
> content to Braille without using a screen reader, you'll have
> to develop a lot more sophistication into the Braille
> display's software. We're not there right now."
>
> Let me echo this.
>
> Making information accessible to a Braille display is most
> often a function of the screen reader, and could conceivably
> be added as part of operating system speech output mechanisms
> like Narrator. the Braille display units however, currently
> would not have any independent capacity to "synchronize"
> information, for example in a captioning situation.
> Personally I'd consider recommending that we make a
> requirement for AT screen reading software that independent
> usage voice or Braille is available, to allow people to
> effectively operate the system using only a Braille display,
> or only the voice, or both as they prefer. Having nospeech
> is nice now and then, but my experience "lately" is that it
> is not as well implemented mostly as it could be.
>
>
>

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