WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: best text to speech ap to show my non-geek sighted friends?

for

From: Phil Teare
Date: Feb 24, 2008 10:40AM

For the greatest ease you could point them to www.chatterblogs.net

Interest declared!

While its yet to fully catch-up to JAWS etc. it now has most of the features
of a full blown screen reader, but is web based, and needs no install for
the vast majority of users (see www.talklets.com for fuller specs etc).
While the blog site is more fully featured, it is beta, and so less stable
under heavy fire... Free to use though, and may give a good overview. Plus
the voice is a bit better than Sam ;)

Best
Phil


On 24/02/2008, shawn klein < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>
> Hi. I meet lots of sighted people on line who are
> interested in how I use a computer, but I don't think
> they're all quite computer savvy enough or would want
> to take the time to install a demo version of Window
> Eyes or Jaws, and I know that Jaws and Window Eyes
> interfere with the normal use of the mouse for people
> who aren't used to having a screen reader running.
> Example: they can't fill out forms in the normal way,
> and Jaws shakes the mouse pointer when it speaks. At
> least Connect Outloud did when I had it 4 years ago. I
> don't know if this applies to NVDA or not. If not I'd
> like to know, because that might be the perfect choice
> then. NVDA doesn't play nice with IE, but I can warn
> them away from having IE open with NVDA running.
> Narrator would be great, but it doesn't even recognize
> all the voices I have on MY computer. The only voice
> choice is Sam. This isn't good for some of my friends
> who speak little or no English. And to tell you the
> truth I wouldn't wish Sam on my worst enemy! Anyone
> have any ideas for something free, compact, requires
> minimal set up, and at least will read what someone
> types in the window, and works with something like Via
> Voice or Espeak, and allows you to choose voice and
> language, and allows you to change settings with the
> mouse so they don't have to learn keyboard shortcuts?
> I know of one like that, but it just works with Skype,
> and not everybody has or wants Skype. Thanks for any ideas.
>
>
>
>