HELP Read	Text Aloud MP3	Home Page Reader	Zoom Text	JAWS	Resources

Project Purpose
The purpose of this project is to review a selection of the two types of assistive technology for the visually impaired to compare the plusses and minuses.  Click on the links above to gain more information about each technology.
 

A Definition
Assistive Technology is defined as any item, equipment, or product that is used to increase, maintain, or improve functional abilities of individuals with disabilities.
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What assistive technology is available for the visually disabled?
For the visually disabled, there are two different types of technology helps: (I) a synthesizer or text-to-speech software and (II) a screen reader.

Speech Synthesizer (text-to-speech) ~ Type I
A synthesizer is simply a card or external box (hardware) or a piece of software which produces the voice and translates text into intelligible speech. It should, for instance, know how to pronounce words which are spelled differently from how they are spoken such as Pneumonia and Encyclopedia.
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Screen Reader ~ Type II
A screen reader is a complex computer program which monitors all computer activities such as keyboard input, new text or graphics being written to the screen, mouse movement, which application or window has the focus, the highlighted menu item or insertion point in a document etc, and sends textual information to a speech synthesizer to be spoken, providing feedback about the running applications and operating system to the user.
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Other features of screen readers
Often this is not enough and a screen reader must also facilitate access to applications which do not have it built in to their design. For example, a screen reader might add keystrokes to an application to activate a function which may only be available by moving a mouse over a graphical icon and clicking the left mouse button (not practical or efficient to do without sight).

A screen reader may also provide other features for making applications more accessible such as allowing the user to program (or add functionality to) the screen reader, such as automatically reading a certain window when a certain event occurs in the application or recognize a nonstandard way of highlighting a menu option.
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Summing It Up
Synthesizer (Text-to-Speech) software is used to convert words from  computer document into audible speech spoken through the computer speaker.  It is different from Screen Reading technology in that is does not read any system information, such as file structure.  The screen reader does the monitoring of the computer environment and decides what text to send to the synthesizer to be spoken. For the purposes of this project, two speech synthesizers, HELP Read and Text Aloud MP3, and three screen readers, Home Page Reader, Zoom Text and JAWS, will be road tested or reviewed.
 

Recommendations

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