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From: Dave.Tanner@p0.f210.n273.z1.fidonet.org (Dave Tanner)
Newsgroups: misc.handicap
Subject: Re: continuation "JAWS (The Best)"
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Date: 4 Jan 91 04:58:56 GMT
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[This is from the Blink Talk Conference]

Well, it was tempting to quote part of the message I am responding
to, but I decided it wasn't worth trying to decide what to quote.
Let's just say that there are several good screen access packages
around today, but everyone of them come up short in one way or
another.  Jaws takes too much memory unless you have Jaws 2 which
is only available for the Accent, yes, there is a Artic version
being beta tested, and I understand from one fellow who has been
testing it that it is really buggy.  Flipper is nice as long as you
don't need any support and plan on keeping the same computer for
the next five years or so. Artic is nice if you don't mind being
chained to never changing to another synthesisor made by another
company other than Artic Technologies. Vocal-eyes is a great
program, but I can think of a few things it could have that it
doesn't. Vert is even a nice software if you don't mind having a
speech software that reflects where the leading speech software
packages were two or three years ago.

I could go on and list a few others, but the real problem is that
none of the IBM speech software packages has even begun to deal
with the biggest problem that is going to become even bigger over
the next several years; GRAPHICS!!!

I think the speech developers need to take some lessons from
Outspoken speech for the Apple Mac.  If some way is not found to
break through this problem of being able to read graphics on the
IBM screen we are soon going to be into a real problem convincing
employers that a blind employee can use the newest software
packages.  It seems that every new release of a widely used
softtware package in the business world is moving more and more
toward a graphics interface.  Businesses are jumping on the Windows
wagon by the flocks and there is absolutely no speech software that
will work with windows because of the graphics interface.

Speech developers, if you are reading this, windows are great and
we do need them, but all the windows in the world won't do anything
to tell us about a screen that is bit mapped.  With all the memory
now available it would seem of prime importance to do whatever
needs to be done to get the graphics interface as accessable to us
as posible.  If it takes a lot of memory to make a software that
will handle that then put the software in expanded or extended
memorywhere memory constraints are not as critical a
consideration.

--
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