WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

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Re: BrowseAloud

for

From: Giovanni Duarte
Date: Mar 23, 2011 6:24PM

Hi,
I have actually used BrowseAloud to the implementation level. This is a
great technology and the person who developed the application was to help
his father who was losing sight - if I recall correctly.
Anyhow, remember that it is not only visual impairment that will benefit for
speech technologies. There are students who have learning disabilities and
reading and listening at the same time is a great tool for them. In
addition, this tool has more "powers". For example, you can export the
speech to an MP3 file on the fly or use translation and dictionary tools.
They even have a highliting feature. I see it more as a study tools that can
enhance your learning experience. I work for an university in we were about
to implemented but for other reasons we couldn't.

BTW: This plugin doesn't need any installation and works in any browsers. I
have been involved in an MathML project and it also works with MathML. It is
a well-developed tool.

Giovanni.

-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Keith (mteye)
Sent: Wednesday, March 23, 2011 5:28 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] BrowseAloud

Not sure what you mean by the stragedy behind it.

That the link was at the bottom of the page? It has to go somewhere, and it
seemed that the article touting the concern of accessibility was intended to
be the main focus, and the following segments were to show the methods taken
to do so.

That they offer talking technology? Personally, if a disabled person is
going to need speech technology, they probably already have it in the first
place, and a talking plugin on a page just seems redundant to me. It's worth
a try, and as soon as I get done typing this, I plan on downloading the
plugin to see exactly how it works.

I suppose if a person really needed it, they could first get a sighted
helper to place a shortcut on their desktop, and assign hotkeys to open it
up to enjoy the accessible page.

I don't anticipate the web page voice will be any more flexible, or
intuitive to use than ascreen reader, but maybe it could feasibly read an
object that might otherwise be hidden by screen reading technology.

just some observations.

keith H.
-----Original Message-----
From: LSnider
Sent: Wednesday, March 23, 2011 1:42 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: [WebAIM] BrowseAloud

Hi All,

Someone just sent this to me...The Library of Congress finally updated their
web site. They now have a speech enabled feature using BrowseAloud. The info
is at the bottom of this page:
http://www.loc.gov/access/web.html

It was interesting to me that they put this speech enabled link at the
bottom of their main page, but at least it is there (I haven't studied their
code yet to see where it comes up with a screen reader).

What do you think of this strategy? Have you used this?

Thanks

Lisa