By: Henny

Henny — Tue, 06 May 2008 15:16:13 +0000

Hi Adrian,
I appreciate your concerns and have also followed comments about WebAnywhere on BCAB. I agree that the devlopment of screen reader tools certainly does seem to have been growing a fair amount recently creating wider choice and with it the possiblity of confusion. I do think there are many positive aspects to having such choice however as long as there is enough information out there that correctly describes all of these products. As you so rightly point out .
In many cases I’m sure the questions “Which product shall I use” will be answered by what environment you are working in. While a screen reader on a USB or CD such as NVDA may be the right solution for a user with no PC of their own it wont necessarily be for people in developing countries where access to even this basic form of storage is not readily available. A solution such as WebAnywhere could fill that gap. On a personal note I feel that we have a responsibility to help facilitate people accessing the web in developing countries and this hardware / software free solution seems highly attractive, especially with the one laptop per child initiative.
Like you say the market is becoming increasingly swamped but again this may lead to future collaboration rather than dilution as vendors team up, many of the newer screen readers on offer are still in their infancy after all. Overall I think your point about ensuring that there is clear understanding on what each solution offers is key. Wikipedia a page listing screen readers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_screen_readers which would be great to expand. It is also a piece of work that organisations such as RNIB, AbilityNet, Becta and others could also work together on.

By: Adrian Higginbotham

Adrian Higginbotham — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 09:12:35 +0000

always good to see new free to use tools and open source activity that adds to the knowledge of the overall community but this side of the market seems to be growing rapidly of late and I fear we’re in danger of giving those who stand to benefit most, the individual new to the technology, too much choice and too little information about which products are appropriate. Which free product shall I use? NVDA the open source screenreader that requires no installation (and can be run from a a USB drive or CD), System Access to go, (recently made freely available to anyone via the accessibility is a right (air) foundation), Thunder (which has been free to individuals for some time) but which has recently been made free to organisations too. or maybe I only need a website screenreader such as the one mentioned here, or Firevox, the free plug-in for the Firefox browser that serves much the same function. and as they are the ones I can think of from the top of my head it seems likely there are others. Anything that means we don’t need to pay $1000 or £500+ for access to a computer is of course welcomed but too much choice and too few unique selling points might just lead to confused users vulnerable to salesmen (and women too) and nothing chaging. It would be nice to see a bit more collaboration between freeware and open source projects leading to fewer but more comprehensive and capable tools rather than all this duplication of effert.

Comments on: WebAnywhere: a free screen reader accessed via the web

By: Henny

By: Adrian Higginbotham