Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!olivea!oliveb!bunker!wtm From: robertj@tekgen.bv.tek.com (Robert Jaquiss) Newsgroups: misc.handicap Subject: CBFB_ARTICLES lazzaro2.txt Message-ID: <15521@handicap.news> Date: 13 May 91 13:47:48 GMT Sender: wtm@bunker.isc-br.com Reply-To: robertj@tekgen.bv.tek.com (Robert Jaquiss) Lines: 577 Approved: wtm@hnews.fidonet.org Fidonet: Split Index Number: 15521 This article is reprinted with the permission of Linda Helgerson, President of CD-ROM ENDuser, Disc Magazine, and CE-ROM End User. It is intended for the use in the CBFB magazine. Any other reprinting must be authorized by Ms. Helgerson. For EndUsers The New Braille: A Look at CD-ROM For Blind Users -- Part I by Joe Lazzaro What would you do if you couldn't read a dictionary or an encyclopedia? What if you had to enlist family or friends to look up facts and figures for you, or to write simple correspondence for you? The blind endure problems like this every day, but many of these needs are being met with sophisticated electronic wizards such as synthesized speech, large print processing and braille access terminals for personal computers that work with CD-ROM. In this three-part series, I will discuss the evolution of information storage for the blind -- braille, talking books, personal computers and the all-important introduction and use of CD-ROM systems. I will describe how speech synthesis, large print and braille access systems work and highlight how to make CD-ROM products more accessible to blind users. >From Talking Books to PCs Since the beginning of recorded history, the blind and visually impaired have been behind the curve in terms of information available to them. The simple fact is that the great bulk of our communication is in the form of the written word, not to mention graphs, charts and other pictorials. But with the advance of technology, ways have been found around this information-gathering problem, allowing the blind to use other senses and methods to gather important data. The first major breakthrough for the blind came with the invention of the braille -- or Braille -- literary code, a raised-dot writing system consisting of six dots for each character, named for its inventor, Louis Braille. In this code, dots are numbered one through six, and various combinations of dots make up letters, numbers, punctuation and other symbols. As braille continued to gain popularity, it became necessary for the development of a braille mathematical code, a braille music code, as well as Grade II braille -- a highly contracted form of shorthand used by the bulk of blind braille readers. There is even a braille computer code in use today, a specialized braille alphabet to deal with the presence of personal and mainframe computer systems. Although braille does have many advantages for the blind and visually impaired, there are still some great drawbacks to the system. Braille is much larger than the printed alphabet, and a printed page can take up to two or three times the normal space when transcribed into braille symbols. At the University of Massachusetts where I attended college, the braille encyclopedia filled nearly half a room. Each individual volume was larger than New York City's Yellow Pages. But even with these bulkier data storage requirements, braille still opened up the printed word for the blind in all its forms, but did little to represent drawings or pictures, other than in crude raised line or dot formats. Because of its many complex contractions and rules, Braille is also difficult to produce, and requires a highly trained transcriber to translate textbooks and other important printed matter. This task used to be performed by hand with a braille typewriter, taking many weeks to translate even a single volume of printed material into the raised dot format. But, over the past five years, microcomputers have been pressed into the braille transcription business. Braille translation software can now quickly and easily translate standard ASCII or other word processing files into perfect braille hard copy, requiring no knowledge of braille in the process. Braille is still with us today, and there is no sign of its disappearance. In fact, there are strong groups among the blind advocating for its consolidation into a standard braille code, including literary, computer, mathematical and scientific notation. The next big breakthrough for the blind came in the form of phonograph records, often called Talking Books. These books are produced by the Library of Congress and are nationally distributed through a network of regional lending libraries. Although the Talking Book Program offers books on almost any subject, from novels to nonfiction, they have largely excluded reference works, such as dictionaries, encyclopedias and so on. About twenty years ago, the audio cassette tape became an important storage medium for talking books for the blind, and the Library of Congress adopted the audio cassette tape as strong competition to the older-style phonograph record talking books. The readership of the National Library Service for the Blind quickly discovered that many readers preferred to receive material recorded on audio cassettes because of the increased portability. The audio cassette tape was also more suitable to perform subject searches, and this made possible the creation of primitive first-generation talking dictionaries and encyclopedias. Yet, the basic problem of being able to store a dictionary or encyclopedia still existed, and only a very few of these reference works were ever committed to audio cassette tape. For instance, there is a significant delay in the time needed for searching the information. If a blind user wanted to look up something in the dictionary tapes, he or she would have to fast-forward or rewind through literally thousands of feet of tape, an activity that could take up to an hour in most cases. The information was all there, but in a highly inaccessible format. In 1982, the National Library Service completed a three-year project of recording the Concise American Heritage Dictionary, which is a "pocket" version of the larger, unabridged dictionary. The Concise Dictionary has about 180,000 entries compared with the 300,000 or more entries for a typical collegiate style dictionary. This recorded work was tone-indexed and voice-indexed. This meant that the user could fast-forward through the tape, hearing select words while the rewind was taking place. This dictionary cost about $80 and was originally recorded on about 56 standard audio cassettes. As a consequence of its structure, it took many minutes to look up an entry in the dictionary, even for an experienced user. An inexperienced user could take up to half an hour hunting for a particular word. At roughly the same time, the American Printing House for the Blind produced the World Book Encyclopedia on audio cassette tape. This recorded encyclopedia sold for about $1,000 and came with a non-standard cassette playback unit designed to locate text on the tape via a complex numbering structure. Every entry in the encyclopedia was numbered, and the user had to key in the number of the entry, which caused the special playback unit to fast-forward to the correct point in the tape. The user could then shift the player into normal playback mode, and comfortably listen to the desired entry. This system was the only one of its kind, and blind users got much mileage out of this system. But, clearly, there had to be a better and faster way. It was obvious to the blind that something new had to be developed, but the right technology simply had not yet arrived. The personal computer was still almost two decades away, and mainframe computers were largely unaccessible, because there was no adaptive equipment. The blind had little or no access to mainframe computer systems at the time because of an almost total lack of proper adaptive equipment. There were some brave pioneers that had created crude adaptive systems, allowing a select hearty but few users access via morse code generators and crude one-of-a-kind braille output terminals. This was the age of audio cassette tape, and talking books, not floppy disks or random access memory. But this did not last for long, and it took the personal computer revolution to bring about a change more important than the creation of braille itself. For EndUsers The New Braille: A Look at CD-ROM For Blind Users -- Part II by Joe Lazzaro The Microcomputer Evolution Over the past five years, the personal computer revolution has brought new vistas for the visually impaired. These electronic wizards have created synthesized speech, large print processing and braille translation, bringing forth megabytes of previously inaccessible data in machine readable formats. The beauty of the personal computer is that once information is entered into its memory or disk storage system, it can become totally accessible to a blind person via voice output, large print or braille. One of the first personal computers to become popular among the blind was the Apple II from Apple Computer. This inexpensive microcomputer became popular because of its use in the public school systems and its popularity among special educators. The first popular access method for the Apple II quickly became synthesized speech, and the most popular speech synthesizer among blind Apple II users rapidly became the Echo II from Street Electronics Corporation of Carpinteria, CA. The Echo II was very inexpensive, retailing for less than $200 initially, making it highly affordable by the bulk of blind computer users. This synthesizer had the software necessary to verbalize all keystrokes and all text apppearing on the monitor. Numerous specially written talking software packages, such as word processors, databases, terminal emulators, spreadsheets and other utilities, were made accessible on the Apple II using an Echo II card. But the Apple II had one basic drawback -- mainstream programs for the most part could not be made to work with either speech, large print or braille. As the blind became more interested in using computers for both home and work applications, it became obvious that using the IBM PC would be very important, especially in terms of working in the mainstream job market. About five years ago, the IBM PC replaced the Apple II computer, opening up even more software and hardware to the blind. It was possible to run mainstream software on the IBM PC using either speech, braille or large print. The IBM PC environment clearly offers the best hope for blind computer users because of its adaptability with either speech synthesis, large print or braille access systems. In order to make an IBM PC "talk," one needs additional hardware and software. The hardware comes in the form of a voice synthesizer which can be either an internal plug-in circuit board or an external printer-like device. The required for speech is called a "screen reader" and is specifically designed to drive internal or external voice devices by forcing all keystrokes and screen text directly to the voice synthesizer. The screen reader also performs many other important tasks, such as tracking color menu bars, blinking text, reading pop-up windows or making select regions of the screen silent to speed access. The Soft-Vert program (Tele Sensory Systems, Mountain View, CA) is a powerful screen reader that allows the user to drive a number of popular voice devices, all the way from the expensive DECtalk synthesizer from Digital Equipment Corporation to the inexpensive Echo PC from Street Electronics Corporation. The Soft-Vert screen reader works well with many off-the-shelf CD-ROM products, but there is a limitation involved with the amount of computer memory available for the CD-ROM. After the user has loaded DOS and the Soft-Vert screen reader (or any other screen reader for that matter), the user has considerably less than 640K available to him or her. If a CD-ROM product demands a full 512K of memory, than the product simply cannot be loaded into memory alongside the screen reader program. A way to solve this is to take advantage of expanded memory for the CD-ROM database engine, so that the lower 640K of memory would be available for use. There is also a trend developing among screen-reader manufacturers to take advantage of expanded memory, so that the DOS 640K memory barrier is not such a severe obstacle. Just as it is possible to make a computer talk with the aid of a voice synthesizer, it is equally possible to create a large print environment for visually impaired computer users who can benefit from increased magnification on the video screen. There are two basic ways to add large print to a computer, using a software-only approach or by adding both hardware and software to the existing personal computer. The software-only approach is considerably less costly than adding large print hardware and has the advantage of being truly portable. The current crop of large print programs enlarge the video display by taking advantage of existing hardware, allowing the user to increase the magnification of the video screen many times. Since the image is enlarged, an entire screen cannot be seen at one time. This may be thought of as looking at a large spreadsheet, one screen at a time, and using the cursor movement keys to move the screen around the spreadsheet. In the large print environment, the user can move the large print window around the "normal" screen text, and can zoom in or out of selected regions. Select cursor attributes can also be tracked or followed, such as highlight bars, blinking text, inverse video or other screen or menu attributes. The Large Print Disk Operating System (LP DOS) is a product of Visionware of Boston, MA and retails for about $500. This can work with most personal computers and provides large print without any additional hardware. The can work with IBM Personal System series computers and is a very popular package for producing large print. The Qwerty Large Print package from HFK of Lincoln, MA, is another popular large print product and is compatible with Hercules video adapter cards, making it widely compatible with most IBM PC compatible systems. These large print generators, like their speech screen reader counterparts, load into memory immediately after the disk operating system (DOS) has loaded, and thus have dominance over all other software currently loaded into the machine. Just as large print and speech can be added to most IBM PC compatible personal computers, braille access is another popular means of accessing a personal computer by blind computer users. Current braille access systems take the form of terminals which are interfaced to the personal computer via an expansion board or through a serial RS232 port. In both cases, screen reading software forces all keystrokes and screen text to the braille terminal. The braille access software can also track screen attributes, such as reverse video, blinking or highlight bars, much as their speech and large print counterparts. The braille provided by these systems is not the traditional hard copy form, but is known as refreshable or paperless braille, which is mechanically produced braille dots popping up and down on a microprocessor controlled strip. The Apple and IBM computers created a whole new world of information for the blind, especially in the form of electronic databases accessed via modem and documentation stored on diskette. But the basic problem of reading large reference works still hung in the background as a still yet unachieved goal, one looking for a new technology to solve it. If only we had computers that could store hundreds of megabytes of data, not just a few tens of megabytes available on most hard drives, and if only this storage medium could be portable, so that information publishers could use it cheaply and effectively. If only we had.... For EndUsers The New Braille: A Look at CD-ROM For Blind Users -- Part III by Joe Lazzaro As if it was created for this important purpose, CD-ROM offers one of the greatest hopes for the blind in terms of raw information storage. In the past, the blind have been forced to use audio tape or braille to obtain important information. These previous storage devices were often not updated as frequently as the printed texts they attempted to make accessible, forcing blind users to make do with older dictionaries and reference works. Naturally, it took a considerable amount of time to transcribe a book or reference text into braille or audio cassette tape. With the trend towards electronic data stored on CD-ROM, the blind can obtain information at the same time as their sighted counterparts. When personal computers began to be used in force by blind persons, it was first thought that the floppy diskette would become the "new braille" or the new "talking book." But information stored on floppy diskette can never fully solve the problem of large reference work storage, as it would take well over 1,000 diskettes to store a comparable amount of information contained on a single CD-ROM product. But now that CD-ROM has caught on among the mainstream computer-using public and is even beginning to take hold among the blind, there are still very great dangers that face the blind. These potential threats come under the guise of programs and operating systems that rely heavily on graphics, and it is graphics merely for the sake of a more attractive screen format, not for increased power or productivity for sighted computer users. This is not to say that using a computer for drawing pictures should be frowned upon, but replacing a friendly text- based interface with a graphics interface merely for slickness' sake will not do the blind community one bit of good. The current generation of speech synthesis, large print and braille access products has only limited success with graphical interfaces. The large print environment is currently the only adaptive aid for the blind that can work somewhat with graphics, but many blind users do not have the vision perception necessary to employ large print as an access device. The bulk of blind computer users rely on speech synthesis, which cannot verbalize a bit-mapped graphics screen and can only pronounce ASCII-based extended graphics characters. The other potential problem that CD-ROM might present to the blind comes in the form of the 640K memory barrier imposed by the MS-DOS operating system. As many readers will realize, the MS-DOS operating system disallows programs larger than 640K to be loaded into system memory. This has forced software developers, in an endless scramble for more power, to utilize as much of this 640K memory as possible, and many programs now require as much as 512K of memory to operate correctly. This leaves barely enough room for DOS to load alongside the desired application program, and leaves no memory whatsoever for other TSR -- "terminate and stay resident" -- programs, such as adaptive speech or large print software. Making CD-ROM More Accessible The CD-ROM market has clearly exploded over the past several years, and more titles are rolled out almost monthly. But if you're a blind person using speech synthesis, large print or braille access systems, the first question you ask yourself is: Will my new CD-ROM title work with adaptive equipment? There are many factors that contribute to the accessibility of a CD-ROM product, or the lack of accessibility of that product. I will present many of these factors, in order of priority, but these may vary from user to user. The first factor is that of available memory; that is, will the CD-ROM software consume so much random access memory that adaptive software cannot load into the machine at the same time? There are few ways around this problem, and adding more memory may not do the trick since DOS can address only 640K of memory at a time. One may be able to use expanded or extended memory, memory addressed higher than the DOS 640K memory, but not all programs will run normally in expanded or extended memory. A good solution to this problem might be for CD-ROM manufacturers to allow their products to run in either expanded or extended memory, which would allow for adaptive software to be co- resident, as well as other TSR programs. There are memory managers, such as Quarterdeck Office Systems Expanded Memory Manager, which can assist somewhat in this area, but many programs do not operate correctly when loaded into expanded memory. The best course to take is that of experimentation. If there is enough memory left over for adaptive software, the next question to ask is about the selected user interface. This is probably the most important question, aside from the memory issue, since a perfectly usable CD-ROM title can be almost totally useless to the blind if it relies too heavily on graphics. This is not to say that graphics should not be employed in CD-ROM products, especially when the data contained within the products is all graphics, as with the case of maps and other pictorials. I am stressing the misuse of graphics, graphics merely for graphics' sake. If a graphics interface is important to the programmer or product designer, then every effort should be made to include a non-graphics-based user interface. The user who wants to use the graphics interface can use his or her interface of choice, and the blind or partially sighted user can employ his or her own interface of necessity as well. Another issue related to graphics has to deal with the use of icons and ASCII graphics characters. The designer should avoid using these characters whenever possible, especially when these characters are used merely for purely decorative reasons. Many screen readers can filter out punctuation marks used as decorations, but these symbols slow down the speech processing time and can confuse low vision users employing large print access systems. The programmer should also be careful when designing menu systems, and take great care to make them stand out as much as possible. For example, a good menu system employs highlight bars or simple inverse video to make selections. A poor choice for a menu system is one that places a graphics character or other symbol next to the selected menu option. These interfaces are difficult for speech output and can also confuse large print users who need as much contrast as possible to aid in screen navigation. The next question might be, what does the screen layout look like? Does it contain many windows, lots of overlapping windows or pop-up dialog boxes? Most screen readers can read windows, but if they do not pop up on the screen in the same place, or overlap other windows, or cannot be made different colors, then the blind user may have great difficulty interacting with the CD-ROM product. An example of this is with the Grolier Electronic Encyclopedia, which works very well until pull-down menus are employed. These menus overlap the article text, and the borders for these windows are ragged, making it difficult for the speech user to define verbal windows. A good rule of thumb to follow is simplicity -- the simpler the better. This is not to say that screens must be boring, but a screen that is too cluttered with information is bad for both blind and sighted users alike. With all this in mind, let's look briefly at some current CD-ROM titles in terms of how they work with adaptive equipment for the blind and visually impaired. Notes on Current CD-ROM Titles The most popular CD-ROM titles among the blind happen to be also some of the most popular titles for the mainstream audience as well because of the great power and flexibility offered by these titles. These titles include Microsoft Bookshelf, Grolier Electronic Encyclopedia, McGraw-Hill Science And Technology Reference Set and Ziff's Computer Library. I will briefly describe each one of these useful products in terms of adaptive equipment, and how they might be improved for blind users. The Microsoft Bookshelf is probably the most popular CD-ROM title being used by the blind community because it works hand-in-hand with one of the most accessible word processors on the market, namely WordPerfect. This CD-ROM is very well behaved because of the way it paints the screen. The Bookshelf is a pop-up utility, designed to terminate and stay resident, and can be popped up with a "hotkey." Once the hotkey is struck, the top two lines of the display screen become the Bookshelf menu bar. The user can select choices from the menu bar by pressing an Alt-Letter combination, such as Alt-D for dictionary, Alt-A for almanac, and so on. This makes it very simple for a blind user to operate, as there are no highlight bars to track or complex menus to search through. Once a menu option is chosen, a search window appears on the screen, but this is relatively well behaved in terms of adaptive equipment. If there is word processing text present on the screen, however, the pop-up windows overlap the text, which can be somewhat confusing at first. But this can be easily gotten around by simply popping up the Bookshelf on top of an empty workspace with no text present. Once a search string has been entered, the Bookshelf is extremely well behaved with adaptive equipment. The blind user can simply use the arrow-keys to move around the text and can even easily use the clipboard functions to store information back to the word processor's workspace. Another popular CD-ROM title is the Grolier Electronic Encyclopedia. This CD-ROM features a full 21-volume encyclopedia, making it highly useful for a blind student or visually impaired person needing to perform research functions. All in all, the Grolier performs well with adaptive equipment, but there are some problems associated with its layers of pull-down menus. These menus are necessary for copying text to disk files or to the printer. The McGraw-Hill Science And Technology Reference CD-ROM is another popular product and an important one to a science student. This encyclopedia contains facts and articles regarding physics, electronics, biology as well as the other hard sciences. All in all, this is one of the most well-behaved CD-ROM titles with adaptive equipment, because it presents text in a straightforward manner with no pull-down menus, dialog boxes or overlapping windows. The search template is clean and uncluttered, with one query allowed per line, making for easy reading with a speech synthesizer, braille terminal or large print processor. The article text always appears in the same place and does not overlap other regions of the screen where other information is displayed. The command line, placed conveniently at the bottom of the screen, is easy to read with speech, large print or braille processors because of its constant placement. Ziff Communications' Computer Library is a full-text retrieval system, stocked with articles and abstracts from dozens of computer periodicals. This CD-ROM title is very useful for blind users because of the sheer amount of information focusing on the computer industry. The user interface resembles Lotus Development Corporation's popular spreadsheet program 1-2-3. The CD-ROM is fairly easy to use by blind or visually impaired computer users, but as with most CD-ROM products, there is room for improvement. The system has much of the look and feel of the Lotus spreadsheet, with the top three lines of the screen assuming the responsibility of the "control panel." The control panel features a menu bar which is highlight-driven. The user moves the highlight bar across the menu choices to make selections. This bar can be easily tracked by most adaptive equipment and is very well behaved. The user can also make menu selections by striking the Alt key along with the first letter of the desired menu option which avoids the need to track the highlight menu bar. Computer Library presents the article text in a straightforward manner, and it is easy to move from article to article with simple PgUp and PgDn keystrokes. The user can also move to the top or bottom of the article by pressing the home or end keys as well, making for intuitive operation. The system's greatest problem comes with its pull-down menus which are necessary for saving files or for printing. These menus overlap the text box, and can sometimes be difficult to track with adaptive equipment. The Future: Hope or Disaster? The entrance of CD-ROM technology has possibly been one of the greatest advents for the blind and visually impaired since the creation of the personal computer system itself. But the adaptive hardware and software manufacturers have had to play a constant game of catch-up with mainstream hardware and software developers. The minute the adaptive vendors get an off-the-shelf software or hardware package adapted properly, the mainstream vendor rolls out yet another version of their product, often changing user interfaces and other "constants" that made their earlier versions adaptable in the first place. The mainstream vendor community and adaptive vendors should be in closer communication, so that new products can be made adaptable while they are in development, not after they have been brought onto the market when change is least likely to occur. The advent of graphics-only interfaces, such as OS/2 and Presentation Manager, also present potential threats to the blind community because of the inability of current adaptive equipment to deal with purely graphical operating systems and software. As graphics takes an even greater share of the current personal computing dollars, it is only a matter of time before the CD-ROM industry feels the need to jump onto the bandwagon, potentially leaving blind and partially sighted users behind in the dust. The blind must not lose all the gains they have made over the past decade in terms of access to information stored on computer systems, and only partnerships between adaptive and mainstream vendors and users can create an environment where positive change does not disenfranchise the blind. If development of adaptive equipment and mainstream CD-ROM products continues in partnership, we can look forward to boundless leaps of information equality and greater potential for both blind and sighted alike.