Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!yale!bunker!hcap!hnews!106!729!Jeff.Salzberg
From: Jeff.Salzberg@f729.n106.z1.fidonet.org (Jeff Salzberg)
Newsgroups: misc.handicap
Subject: Re: Synthesizer interfacing
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Date: 20 Sep 90 15:59:02 GMT
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[This is from the Blink Talk Conference]

You recently wrote to Eric Bohlman:

 JP>     I have read your message a few times and it is a bit
 JP> confusing to me...I will refer it to Rich and see what he can do
 JP> to work with the many different types of synthesizers.  He will

If I may stick my 2 cents in here...

I believe that what Eric was saying is that you DON'T have to make your
software work with the many synthesizers; any blind person who has a
synth already has a screen-reading program to do that.  What is
incumbent upon the author of software that is to be used by blind users
is that s/he write it so that it works well with not the synth, but with
the screen-reader.  Fortunately, this is relatively easy.  In a
nutshell, the way to do it is by using calls to the DOS and BIOS
interrupts rather than using direct screen writes.  Mind you, you don't
want the synth to say EVERYTHING (constant time updates would be
annoying, for instance); that's where programmers have to be insightful,
clever, and intuitive.  I am rarely any of those, but I am,
ocassionally, lucky.

Willie, Eric, Donald, did I get that right?

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