It's all very facinating ... looking back.... the years ahead will be even more interesting! In 1989, when I had been working for about 19 years at Tata Steel, my Company decided to import from the American Printing House for the Blind, Louisville, Ky, U S A, a hardware screen reader called the "Speaqualizer" - priced at $1,000 (the exchange rate then was Rs17 to 1 $). The Company also paid customs at the rate of 300% and the landed cost became Rs.68,000. This was a 8 bit device and worked with a PC XT. The sound quality of this device wasn't all that great but one got used to it. With the help of the accompanying manual and a very dedicated trainer from our I T Department, I learnt Word Star, dBASE3 and Lotus 1 2 3. I used the Speaqualizer for over 11 years and never felt the urgency to progress to Windows but after my early separation from the Company, my young friend Atul Sahay got me going on Jaws 3.81 after i Had bought my first computer which had the necessary RAM and hard disc space. This was 2001. If at anytime, a museum is setup, dedicated to the evolution of technology for the vision impaired, I will be only too happy to offer the Speaqualizer for prosterity to marvel over! Wishing you all a Very Happy, Fruitful and Satisfying New Year, P L Varma Jamshedpur
----- Original Message ----- From: "Harish Kotian" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, December 25, 2007 12:22 PM Subject: Re: [AI] history of computer education for blind in india > Hi Rohit > Certainly, that goes by default, smile. It is a win, win situation for one > and all. It is a constant, community driven education for all the members. > > Harish > Harish. > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Dr. Rohit Trivedi" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: <[email protected]> > Sent: Sunday, December 23, 2007 6:53 PM > Subject: Re: [AI] history of computer education for blind in india > > >> Access india is also an important step if you write about the history of >> computer education >> ----- Original Message ----- >> From: "Harish Kotian" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >> To: <[email protected]> >> Sent: Wednesday, December 19, 2007 10:57 PM >> Subject: Re: [AI] history of computer education for blind in india >> >> >>> Hello all >>> >>> Thanks for the interest in my story. I think I shall put in different >>> parts. This is part 2. >>> >>> Thankfully I did recall the name of the developer of the look alike of >>> Mimic synthesizer. He is Prof. M.P. Srinivasan. I would call him the >>> pioneer of access technology in India. Not only did he design speech >>> synthesizer, I also saw a working prototype of electronic notetaker and >>> Braille printer. He was totally ready for technology transfer for these >>> 2 >>> items. Sadly, there were no takers for it. Probably, it could be still >>> resorected, provided somebody takes up the manufacturing of it. We would >>> have an inexpensive Braille printers which would have been immensely >>> useful to blind students and other professionals. >>> >>> With the problems of supplies cropping up with IC's of speech >>> synthesizers, he gave up working on it.He sourced New Talk, which was a >>> clone of Tiny Talk. In mid 90's sound cards became an add on to the PC >>> hardware, Tiny Talk, supported a large number of hardware synthesizer's >>> and also supported a software synthesizer for the first time. Making it >>> to >>> work with software synthesizer was very tricky and I did manage to >>> configure it for many blind folks. I also managed to make Mimic >>> synthesizer to work with it. One could also run it in the DOS box of >>> Windows. I managed to make it work this way as well. >>> >>> Prof. M.P. Srinivas migrated to US later on and soon thereafter the >>> development of access technology ceased at I I S e. >>> >>> Another great soul was Prof Guha, I hope I can remember the name right. >>> He >>> was with IIT Delhi and had his lab at AIIMS. He too made novel >>> contribution. I had seen a system with the teacher and the student >>> connected by seperate terminals. The teacher both sighted and blind >>> could >>> use it. The system was designed for teaching the blind in schools. >>> >>> I had seen a high tech system to plot graphics in Braille sheets >>> developed >>> by him. >>> >>> I don't know what happend down the road to these systems. >>> >>> Networked teaching was also tried out IIT Kharagpur, I had myself not >>> experienced it and can't offer any comments. >>> >>> In early 90's I met Prof. Patankar from BARC. He showed keen interest in >>> making access technology. I interacted closely with him. He was wanting >>> to >>> make a terminal, with Braille keyboard, with its own wordprocessor and >>> OCR >>> and speech synthesizer. I saw a working prototype except the OCR >>> functioning. He gave me one unit for field trials. One issue on which I >>> strongly differed with him was that, I was asking him to make the >>> application software of memory resident type, which would give us the >>> freedom to use it with any application of our choice and not to be >>> restricted to the one he offered. He kept on promising he would do it on >>> a >>> later date. I realised he was not going to do that and one day he did >>> make his intentions clear. I parted ways with him. Later on he went on >>> to >>> recieve the President's award but sadly, none of us ever got to used the >>> device. >>> >>> When at Bangalore, I came across the vidya vriksha project. Sriram and >>> myself visited their center at Chennai. We evaluated it thoroughly and >>> made known to them some small shortcommings which were making it >>> difficult >>> to use. Sadly, again, the feedback was not incorporated and a wonderful >>> multi lingual editor did not make a good tool for us. >>> >>> I'll call it a day now and more in part 3. >>> Warmly >>> Harish. >>> >>> To unsubscribe send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] >>> with the subject unsubscribe. >>> >>> To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, >>> please visit the list home page at >>> >>> http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in >>> >> >> >> To unsubscribe send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] >> with the subject unsubscribe. >> >> To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, >> please visit the list home page at >> >> http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in >> > > > > To unsubscribe send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > with the subject unsubscribe. > > To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, > please visit the list home page at > http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in To unsubscribe send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the subject unsubscribe. 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