[JDEV] Accessability for the Impaired

[Dave]

What's wrong with simply using a text-only client and redirecting stdin
to the voice recognition engine, and stdout and stderr to the speech
synthesis engine?  That way, anybody who knows how to use the stock
version of the client automatically knows how to use the "accessible"
version (assuming he knows how to use the speech recognition/synthesis
engines - but those can be just as interchangeable as the client itself,
leaving people with lots of natural options).

Dave Cohen <dave at dave.tj>

BTW - I can see plenty of applications for "chatting" with my IM client
even though I'm perfectly capable of typing:

1) If I'm trying to get a nap, and somebody sends me an urgent message,
it'd be great if my computer could try to wake me up, and then give me
the message if it succeeded; I'd then be able to reply by simply speaking.

2) If I ever get around to putting my wearable together, it will not
have a monitor, so the user (I, that is) will be "blind" by definition.
It also won't be very convenient to type on it, especially if my hands
are busy.

3) Being able to talk to an IM client means I can fake a voice chat,
but even better, the other side doesn't have to understand anything
but standard text.  Now, if the other side is also equipped with the
ability to talk to his IM client, we can carry out a live conversation,
since audio->text compression is the best data compression you can get
(unless you want to bzip2 the text, or something) ... and we'll even have
bandwidth left for any other online activities we may want to be engaged
in (although our CPUs will take a bit of a hit in the speech synthesis
and recognition - but you can easily run the "accesibility" programs
on a seperate system than the actual chat program if you're using my
idea of simple redirection on a text-only client rather than trying to
hardcode some sort of "accessibility features" into a chat program).


Russell Valentine wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 3 Jun 2002 05:08:57 -0700 (PDT)
> Ajay Garg <milliumus at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> > I would be interested in knowing which Voice Rec engine you are using.
> > 
> > Thanks
> 
> 
> 
> Sphinx: http://www.speech.cs.cmu.edu/sphinx/
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