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Re: Advice sought for ReadSpeaker

for

From: ckrugman
Date: Jul 19, 2010 2:27PM

As a screen reader user audio speech on web sites can cause severe
difficulties. Unfortunately the read speed of spoken audio on such sites is
much slower than what is used by many screen reader users. Additionally, The
audio level of spoken content in many cases will drown out screen readers
and make it difficult for a screen reader to use such sites unless you have
a mechanism to disable the speech from the site in question. This also
applies to musical backgrounds and other types of sound effecdts. While they
can be interesting or amusing there needs to be means for disabling them
when needed.
Chuck
----- Original Message -----
From: "Patrick Dunphy" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
To: "WebAIM Discussion List" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Sent: Monday, July 19, 2010 8:11 AM
Subject: [WebAIM] Advice sought for ReadSpeaker


>I did a search of this discussion forum on "ReadSpeaker" & saw this
> discussed 5+ years ago. As we all know, that's an eternity in internet
> time. Has anyone dealt with this product recently?
>
> I usually don't take "Accessible" type widgets very seriously - but I've
> been looking at this and have to admit to being impressed. Continuing to
> do
> your due diligence in making sure your site is accessible as possible is
> still an absolute must. But once that's complete you could compliment
> your
> native accessibilty initiatives by leveraging a product such as
> ReadSpeaker. Doing so could help make your content available to a much
> wider audience as it's primary benefactors are those that suffer from
> cognitive disorders as well as ESL & those with poor reading groups.
> That
> combined with the fact there's no plug-in required have me thinking it's a
> win-win.
>
> Having said all this, I'm still on the outside looking in. Does anyone
> have
> any recent hands on experience with this product? If so can you share
> your
> experiences & opinion on this product?
>
> Thanks!
> -PD
>