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From: glen@intelca.UUCP (Glen Shires)
Newsgroups: net.micro
Subject: Re: Use of Kermit by the Blind
Message-ID: <113@intelca.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 7-Oct-85 15:03:40 EDT
Article-I.D.: intelca.113
Posted: Mon Oct  7 15:03:40 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 12-Oct-85 19:06:04 EDT
References: <1835@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Organization: Intel, Santa Clara, Ca.
Lines: 28

> I've had a call from Kenneth Reed at NASA in Greenbelt, MD (phone 301-344-8414)
> asking how Kermit can be used effectively by blind people.  Back in the days
> when computers had terminals, you could put a device like a Votrax or DECtalk
> or whatever between the terminal and the computer, and it could try to speak
> the letters and numbers, or words, as they went by.  But microcomputers don't
> generally have a place to attach such a device.  Kenneth says his Apple II
> has a special card that somehow gets characters just before they're about to
> be put on the screen and presumably can transmit them to a speaking device,
> but that's just for the Apple.

As a start, most computers with card slots have add-on plug-in serial cards
which can attach to speech synthesizers.

And most operating systems have commands to direct output thru this card.
(MSDOS will with the command:    CTTY COM1:

This works well for simple programs that only write to the screen with
OS calls and scroll the screen as they go.
However, you're right that a lot of software is screen oriented and doesn't
work well.  You could attempt to write a filter for these programs
(but that would be no trivial task).


-- 
^ ^    Glen Shires, Intel, Santa Clara, Ca.
O O     Usenet: {ucbvax!amd,pur-ee,hplabs}!intelca!glen
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