Technology

Sight Village 2007 - affordable screen reading

Summary: Regular technology articles, updates, reports and events.

• Introduction
• System Access
• The Thunder Screenreader
• Mercury
• Conclusion
• References

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Introduction

Each July a couple of thousand people pitch up in Birmingham to take a look at the latest technology and services for people with sight loss. Queen Alexandra College's Sight Village exhibition is now an established event in the calendar and is not to be missed.

This year's stands were packed with some familiar technology, but amongst the new exciting kit was GPS software for the mobile phone, a new pocket sized DAISY player and some new CCTVS. We, however, asked three reporters to take a look at affordable screen reader solutions, to check them out and give their professional opinion.

Each reporter is a qualified access technology trainer, so each is a good judge of what is needed in a screen reader for a home user.

System Access

By Irene Cooper

System Access from Serotek is fast becoming a big player in the field of accessibility software. It offers good access to Windows XP and Vista, along with many applications including Microsoft Office and particularly Word 2007 with its new ribbon bar format for menus.

For users of other screen readers, especially Jaws, whose keystrokes are similar, System Access is easy to learn in a very short time, using the help facilities which are more than adequate for the most popular applications. There are some excellent audio tutorials, one of which takes you through how to use the letter wizard in Word which could help people who have difficulty with the layout of letters. I tested the label and envelopes tabs and found them fine apart from one small glitch: the spinboxes for column and row in the labels tab were not identified as such but just as editable fields.

The Internet Explorer experience is enhanced by C-SAW, a facility enabling more experienced visitors to less accessible web sites to label links and make them available to all System Access users.

For beginners, I believe this software offers a comprehensive solution with many of the facilities and fewer of the complications of the leading screen readers.

The product is available in a number of different packages which makes the pricing structure slightly complicated but there is more likely to be an option to suit most requirements. For each package, you pay a one-off charge plus £70 each subsequent year to ensure that your software is kept up-to-date. The one-off costs (at time of writing) range from £220, for the System Access software licensed for installation on two PC's, to £325, for System Access Mobile Platinum which includes the software plus System Access installed on a U3 smart drive, enabling you to take your screen reader with you and use it on any PC that has a USB port.

If the DECtalk speech is not to your taste, you can buy the more human sounding Neospeech voices. You can also add System Scan which allows you to scan and read documents if you have a compatible scanner.

The latest development from Serotek is System Access To Go, which is currently being beta tested. It will allow you to go to any PC with an Internet connection and download System Access. When you close it down after use, it will disappear, leaving no trace on the machine.

For full information on these exciting products, contact Computer Room Services in the UK or serotek (see below for contact details).

The Thunder Screenreader

By Graham Page

Thunder is a free screenreader available from www.screenreader.net. It is intended for home users, and indeed, it is necessary to pay for Thunder if it is used in the workplace.

According to the website, Thunder works with the following programs and more:

• MS Calculator
• MS Excel
• MS Internet Explorer (using WebbIE internet text browser)
• Listen-again radio
• Nod32 antivirus
• MS Notepad
• MS Outlook Express
• MS Sound recorder
• MS vista
• MS Windows2000
• MS Windows XP
• MS Word
• MS WordPad.

There is a download from the website containing a number of "how to“ files describing the kind of tasks that a typical user may wish to perform. These files are useful, despite some giving incorrect keystroke information.

Outlook Express was used for creating, reading and sending emails, some with attachments. Messages can only be read using the preview pain. This is unusual and I couldn’t understand why pressing enter to go into a message would not read it. I only found out about reading messages in preview pane when I read the manual.

Microsoft Word and Microsoft Wordpad both worked as expected, although when creating a table in Word, it was not obvious that I had entered the table until I pressed the keystroke Alt-3, which reads current row and column information.

The spell checker worked, but I had to press a keystroke to hear the spelling of the incorrect word.

For using the World Wide Web, another free program called Webbie is used in conjunction with Internet Explorer version 6 or later. This allows the user to navigate a web page with the arrow keys, or move through the page using the arrow keys, or moving by link, heading and form. This means that the user can navigate many web pages effectively, interacting with forms for inputting information and changing options as required.

Thunder does not read automatically as much as some other screen readers and on my machine I do not hear the characters deleted when I backspace over them. The musical tones that play by default when moving around a document may also not be to everyone’s liking but they can easily be turned off.

Generally, I believe Thunder is a useful product that does far more than the free tool Narrator, which is included with windows XP.

Mercury

By Jason Spencer

Mercury is a cost effective Access Technology developed by Dolphin Computer Access and sold by RNIB. It uses both magnification and a screenreader with some of the most useful and common features a user expects from Access Technology. It enables even the beginner to boot the PC and access common applications from a simple to use control panel, including:

• MS Word;
• Outlook Express;
• Windows Media Player;
• PDF Document Reader (Adobe Reader);
• Internet Explorer;
• Calculator;
• Scanning software.

Magnification – zoom levels range from 2x to 28x. The user can magnify using full screen, static window, moving window, or moving window with auto focus. The programme has colour management enabling the user to customise the appearance of the screen from a selection of predefined schemes: inverse, yellow on blue, yellow on black or white on blue.

Speech – Mercury offers a feature rich screenreader including character echo, capital announcement, spelling/grammar errors, table announcement, punctuation, links and number (digits, words or paired). Mercury also enables the user to customise the verbosity settings. It is also possible to navigate the web and PDF files using virtual focus; this is a method of navigating those areas where you cannot normally navigate using a standard cursor.

Mercury comes with two speech synthesizers, Orpheus from Dolphin and Eloquence from Nuance. Alternatively, the programme can use SAPI voices, which can be purchased separately from third party suppliers.

Mercury has an intuitive hotkey set which I found simple to learn and if I needed further assistance, both the online help system, key describe mode and Application Notes were useful. The online help system is written in plain english and if jargon is used, it is explained.

I am able to produce letters, write emails, watch and listen to MP3 and video, surf the net, live chat with friends and have hardcopy documents read aloud. Although I would suggest users receive some training, it is not essential if you have previous experience in using a PC and the Windows operating system and standard software.

Mercury does lack one or two features that I personally find useful, including Foci Highlighting, which are included with the more advanced Access Technology, but this aside Mercury opens up access to the most common applications.

The cost of Mercury is competitive and given the advanced features available including a desktop PC and all necessary software, will prove an invaluable starting point for those who need the essentials. If you want more from you PC, it is advisable that you opt for a more comprehensive Access Technology.

Conclusion

It would seem that access technology companies have finally cottoned on to the fact that not all people who need a screen reader or magnifier have a government grant to pay for it. These three solutions, plus others like Guide from Software Express, provide a reliable, affordable solution for those home users who are on a budget.

References

Computer Room Services

Telephone 0845 260 6277

Serotek Corporation, manufacturer of System Access in US

Screenreader.net

Telephone 01733 234441

Dolphin Computer Access

Telephone 0845 130 5353

This article was first published in NB magazine in September 2007

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Content author: digitalaccess@rnib.org.uk

Last updated: 20/11/2008 11:13