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From: Patrick Dunphy
Date: Mon, Jul 19 2010 9:12AM
Subject: Advice sought for ReadSpeaker
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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

From: deblist
Date: Mon, Jul 19 2010 9:30AM
Subject: Re: Advice sought for ReadSpeaker
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The problem with accessible widgets is that most people who need
them will also have to have some other kind of accessibility
control, and it makes much more sense to work with existing
adaptive technology than to try to reproduce adaptive tech for a
single website.

(This is my frustration with Opera browse-by-voice. People who
are browsing by voice are also presumably controlling their
computers by voice, and switching back and forth between opera
voice control and general desktop voice control is clearly not
desirable behavior. It would make more sense for Opera to do the
work to play nicely with existing speech recognition systems.)

In the particular case of ReadSpeaker, I didn't find it to be
keyboard accessible playing around with their demos, but maybe
there was something I misunderstood.

-deborah

From: Patrick Dunphy
Date: Mon, Jul 19 2010 9:45AM
Subject: Re: Advice sought for ReadSpeaker
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Thanks Deborah,

I too noticed the lack of keyboard accessibity. Not crazy about it playing
back via a flash object & am hoping that the playback interface can be
customized.

What I like about this is that this isn't intended to be a replacement for
existing adaptive technology. I'd expect screen reader users to keep using
screen readers. It plays back only if you want it too & would benefit those
that don't necessarily use a screen reader.

Thanks!
-PD


On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 11:29 AM, < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:

> The problem with accessible widgets is that most people who need
> them will also have to have some other kind of accessibility
> control, and it makes much more sense to work with existing
> adaptive technology than to try to reproduce adaptive tech for a
> single website.
>
> (This is my frustration with Opera browse-by-voice. People who
> are browsing by voice are also presumably controlling their
> computers by voice, and switching back and forth between opera
> voice control and general desktop voice control is clearly not
> desirable behavior. It would make more sense for Opera to do the
> work to play nicely with existing speech recognition systems.)
>
> In the particular case of ReadSpeaker, I didn't find it to be
> keyboard accessible playing around with their demos, but maybe
> there was something I misunderstood.
>
> -deborah
>

From: Robinson, Grant (CSS)
Date: Mon, Jul 19 2010 9:51AM
Subject: Re: Advice sought for ReadSpeaker
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While it is preferable to use one's own adaptive technology, some
environments such as self serve kiosks or public computers that are
managed exclusive of user installed software may find these widgets
useful. An alternative that is server side and has keyboard control
Is RokTalk at Roktalk.com. Press F9 or ALT-1 to activate the widget.
Keyboard commands are 'similar' to JAWS. I'v also added the
instructions page.
http://www.roktalk.com/user-guide.html#Keyboard%20Controls

Cheers!
Grant

From: ckrugman
Date: Mon, Jul 19 2010 2:27PM
Subject: Re: Advice sought for ReadSpeaker
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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 ADDRESS REMOVED = >
To: "WebAIM Discussion List" < = EMAIL ADDRESS 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
>