Hello Simon,
VisioVoice and Infovox iVox are separate entities.
Infovox iVox consists of a number of voice packages, in various
languages, which work exactly like the built-in Mac voices. You can
buy just Infovox iVox voices without VisioVoice. Once they are
installed, they are available to voiceOver.
VisioVoice consists of a spoken interface and a reader. The spoken
interface is mostly used by people with some sight who prefer not to
use VoiceOver but like to have text read to them. It also provides
better contrast and other useful features for people with some sight
but someone else would have to explain all that as I have no sight at
all. It allows you to choose to have the text under the mouse spoken,
with or without a delay. It also provides for typing echo. It can be
useful for totally blind users for reading text that VoiceOver can't
reach.
The VisioVoice reader acts rather like a cassette player. You have the
following controls: Play, Pause, Rewind, Fast Forward, Stop and Close
Window. It also has a facility for creating an audio file from a text
document. You can also tell it to export this file to iTunes.
VisioVoice is invaluable for people working in more than one language
as you can simply highlight text in a language other than the one the
computer is set to, and have VisioVoice read it. I do this for reading
emails in French. On a website, you can highlight the whole page and
have VisioVoice read it.
You can programme up to 5 voices for each function in VisioVoice which
means that you can have 5 languages preprogrammed. You can switch
voices on the fly using Control-Shift-1 through 5. All VisioVoice
shortcuts can be changed to suit the user.
I hope this answers your questions.
Cheers,
Anne
On Jun 26, 2008, at 12:50 AM, Simon Cavendish wrote:
Dear Listers,
I've been looking at the assistiveware website with a view to
udnerstanding how Visiovoice and infovox ivox work. Forgive my
ignorance but with the best will in the world I do not understand
how these two pieces of software integrate with Voiceover. I must be
quite stupid or else software designers live on a different planet.
Smile. Does visiovoice take over the functionalities of Voiceover?
The assistiveware website talks of Visiovoice having its shortcut
keys and etc. And then there's Infovoxand ivox on top of it. I give
up, listers, I'm confused. I want the multilingual accessiblity but
what happens to all the knowledge I have gained of how to navigate
the Mac computer with Voicoever? Does this stuff have to be so
complicated? Or maybe it is me. Let's say I want to use the
linguistic abilities of Visiovoice or Infoxvox, can I still use the
vo keys and other keys to navigate round the applications etc.? Or
do I have to use Visiovoice specific keys? It's crazy. Why doesn't
Visiovoice producers make it clear? And how does Infovox integrate
with Visiovoice and then all of this with Voiceover? It's crazy and
yet there must be some order in it because some of you seem to be
using all three successfully.
Please give me some clarity where the producers have failed or have
not cared to.
With many thanks in anticipation, Simon
