I can't think why anyone would say that on-screen OCR would not be a proper function for a screen reading program.
OK, since I am the one who opened up this can, I will comment. My expectations of a program, like Window-Eyes, is to give me access to my computer. So I want to know when I am on my desktop, my start menu, taskbar etc. When I launch a web browser I need to know if I am reading text or what type of element has focus; link, button, check box, and so on. If an image pops up that is in a PDF file or if there is a jpg, tif, gif, . . . file up there, if Window-Eyes lets me know that there is a graphic I don't think it is the responsibility of WE to try to guess if there is text that needs to be pushed through an OCR engine. Let's use Adobe Acrobat as an example. The paid version of Adobe Acrobat has OCR capabilities. Why have I not urged Adobe to put that into their Adobe Reader that is currently free? I feel if they put that capability into their free product that would make it screen reader independent. And yes, I feel the ball should be in their court and companies like GW Micro shouldn't be expected to pick up the slack. For me this also holds true for badly designed web sites. My screen reading application should not be so complex as to try to decipher what is on the screen. Developers need to adhere to standards, W3C for example, that make the sites accessible to as many people as possible. Vic If you reply to this message it will be delivered to the original sender only. If your reply would benefit others on the list and your message is related to GW Micro, then please consider sending your message to [email protected] so the entire list will receive it. GW-Info messages are archived at http://www.gwmicro.com/gwinfo. You can manage your list subscription at http://www.gwmicro.com/listserv.
