Fwd: Voice synthesizer for blind and visual impaired person
Don't forget that phones have vibrators. They could be used in cunning ways with a relatively simple UI to provide feedback and thus usability of touchscreens for even completely blind people. On 3/27/07, Gabriel Ambuehl [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tuesday 27 March 2007 10:23:08 Bartlomiej Zdanowski AutoGuard Ltd. wrote: There's so much to do for blind person and we can do it together so think guys and please provide some solutions and thoughts. I would imagine that a touchscreen only phone is quite hard to use for blind people as opposed to a phone with proper keys? ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Voice synthesizer for blind and visual impaired person
I forgot mentioning pocketsphinx (voice recognition), which has an openembedded port already ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Voice synthesizer for blind and visual impaired person
Hi I've been recently confronted to these questions for the tuxdroid project (which i intend to run on a NAS/Home router). About text-to-speech, eSpeak seems really interesting for embedded devices, plus it's more or less the only 100% free sotfware of this category (others, like festival / flite * for embedded *, are free, but not their voice models..). http://www2.tux-is-alive.com/wiki/Text-to-speech As for in-app integration: http://www.speechio.org/ About speech recognition, i'd say that it's today very hard if not impossible to get a working dication feature. The best option may be to skip it, and concentrate on command launching: more basic pattern-based recognition. A great option (if we manage to make it run) is CVoiceControl, but it needs maintainers: the project is down. http://www.kiecza.net/daniel/linux/ See http://www2.tux-is-alive.com/wiki/Speech_recognition for our preliminary evaluations and resources/links ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Voice synthesizer for blind and visual impaired person
Hi. I thought about voice synthesizer software to build in OpenMoko for blind person. I know some blind people and currently they can only use Nokia with Symbian and proper software. Does anyone have any experience with voice synthesizer soft and can provide some info whether it can be implemented on OpenMoko platform? There's so much to do for blind person and we can do it together so think guys and please provide some solutions and thoughts. Best regards, -- *Bartlomiej Zdanowski* Programmer Product Research Development Department AutoGuard Insurance Ltd. Omulewska 27 street 04-128 Warsaw Poland phone +48 22 611 69 23 www.autoguard.pl http://www.autoguard.pl ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Voice synthesizer for blind and visual impaired person
Bartlomiej Zdanowski AutoGuard Ltd. wrote, On 27/03/07 17:53: Hi. I thought about voice synthesizer software to build in OpenMoko for blind person. I know some blind people and currently they can only use Nokia with Symbian and proper software. Does anyone have any experience with voice synthesizer soft and can provide some info whether it can be implemented on OpenMoko platform? There's so much to do for blind person and we can do it together so think guys and please provide some solutions and thoughts. Hi, a person I used to work for had a package called Mobile Accessibility on a Nokia (symbian os) handset. The drawbacks included not being entirely stable, being expensive, the copy protection that meant it couldn't be moved from handset to handset without getting a new activation code from the supplier, and the lack of ability to customise things. A large, high contrast display would help many vision impaired people, and a well-thought out spoken menu system with speech synthesis would help many low vision and completely blind people. The FIC 1973 does have the drawback of there being no tactile feedback for input via the screen. Does the hardware support the touch screen working if it were covered with a clear plastic screen with a raised grid pattern on it? Regards, Arthur. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Voice synthesizer for blind and visual impaired person
Arthur Marsh napisał(a): A large, high contrast display would help many vision impaired people, and a well-thought out spoken menu system with speech synthesis would help many low vision and completely blind people. The FIC 1973 does have the drawback of there being no tactile feedback for input via the screen. Does the hardware support the touch screen working if it were covered with a clear plastic screen with a raised grid pattern on it? Right I forgot about tactile display but plastic keys should be great. I think it should work because all PDA point-sticks work great. Touch-keys don't have to be clear... because blind person don't care about it, remember. Regards -- *Bartlomiej Zdanowski* Programmer Product Research Development Department AutoGuard Insurance Ltd. Omulewska 27 street 04-128 Warsaw Poland phone +48 22 611 69 23 www.autoguard.pl http://www.autoguard.pl ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Voice synthesizer for blind and visual impaired person
Quoting Bartlomiej Zdanowski AutoGuard Ltd. [EMAIL PROTECTED]: [snip] Right I forgot about tactile display but plastic keys should be great. I think it should work because all PDA point-sticks work great. Touch-keys don't have to be clear... because blind person don't care about it, remember. But not all of their friends are blind. Making a phone unusable by a sighted person is as bad as making it unusable for a blind person. At least for POTS usage. IMHO, anyone who has used a cellphone before should be able to pick up an unfamiliar phone and answer a call and/or make a call a manually entered number. Ideally this would extend to deaf people too. However, I don't think texting UI is as standardized as voice hard/soft keys UI. Just my $0.02USD, Jeffrey ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Voice synthesizer for blind and visual impaired person
There are a lot of people who can't read the tiny fonts on their phone screen. I'm particularly interested in making a UI variant that is optimized for people with failing eyesight, but not completely blind. I have a friend with macular degeneration who wants me to make a phone she can use, and many older people just get long sighted and want a simple UI they can actually read. For completely blind people we could make a voice driven UI using VoiceXML to specify the flows. I work alongside someone who has done VXML work using Tellme's backend service. I'm not sure if there are implementations we could use on the phone itself. Adrian On 3/27/07, Gabriel Ambuehl [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tuesday 27 March 2007 10:23:08 Bartlomiej Zdanowski AutoGuard Ltd. wrote: There's so much to do for blind person and we can do it together so think guys and please provide some solutions and thoughts. I would imagine that a touchscreen only phone is quite hard to use for blind people as opposed to a phone with proper keys? ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Voice synthesizer for blind and visual impaired person
I work at the Kansas School for the Blind. Portable computing devices for the visually impaired are extremely expensive, so seeing an affordable OpenMoko device that is blind-friendly would be great. Personally, I am interested in OpenMoko because I think using a phone for remote administration of my Linux servers would be convenient. But, I'd be more than interested in connecting developers with the experts I know in the field of disability accommodations. As for making touch-screen devices accessible, take a look at the Maestro, which has a clip-on cover for Dell Axim PocketPCs. You can see a picture of the device at http://www.humanware.ca/web/en/p_DA_Maestro.asp#content A similar clip-on device would be ideal in the case of OpenMoko. Obviously, if the UI were designed with such a cover in mind, then implementation of the cover device would be much easier. ~Bradley adrian cockcroft wrote: There are a lot of people who can't read the tiny fonts on their phone screen. I'm particularly interested in making a UI variant that is optimized for people with failing eyesight, but not completely blind. I have a friend with macular degeneration who wants me to make a phone she can use, and many older people just get long sighted and want a simple UI they can actually read. For completely blind people we could make a voice driven UI using VoiceXML to specify the flows. I work alongside someone who has done VXML work using Tellme's backend service. I'm not sure if there are implementations we could use on the phone itself. Adrian On 3/27/07, Gabriel Ambuehl [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tuesday 27 March 2007 10:23:08 Bartlomiej Zdanowski AutoGuard Ltd. wrote: There's so much to do for blind person and we can do it together so think guys and please provide some solutions and thoughts. I would imagine that a touchscreen only phone is quite hard to use for blind people as opposed to a phone with proper keys? ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Voice synthesizer for blind and visual impaired person
Hello, I will be also glad to focus on such a project. As a note, a talking mobile, offering eyes-free applications can probably interest visually impaired or sighted persons. Today, the Linux desktop offers several alternatives for speech enabling applications. For example: * Speakup, Yasr, Emacspeak in text-based mode. * The Gnome Accessibility Project, particularly, the Orca and LSR screen readers, distinct Accessibility APIs. Does some of these concepts may benefit to a mobile with native GTK+ based applications? I guess that firstly an evaluation is needed to measure its feasibility. The Speakup and Gnome Accessibility lists have been informed of this thread. For info, eSpeak is a GPL voice synthesizer: http://espeak.sf.net Some features: - multi languages, - small footprint, - runs on Intel or ARM platforms. Today it works with Orca, Speakup (via Speech-Dispatcher), Emacspeak and more. eSpeak will be the default voice synthesizer in Ubuntu Feisty. Gilles -- Oralux http://oralux.org ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Voice synthesizer for blind and visual impaired person
as coincidence would have it BBC Radio 4 had a piece today about mobile phones for the blind, and the consesus was that a talking phone would drive a partially sighted user mad within a few minutes. to listen to it all (free): http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/shows/rpms/radio4/intouch.ram should be available for 7 days On 3/28/07, Gilles Casse [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello, I will be also glad to focus on such a project. As a note, a talking mobile, offering eyes-free applications can probably interest visually impaired or sighted persons. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
