[JDEV] Accessability for the Impaired

[Russell Valentine]

On Tue, 07 May 2002 13:46:00 -0400
Adam Theo <theo at theoretic.com> wrote:

 
> For the blind, some sort of voice command and dictation software should 
> be built in, or at least allow third-party voice software to use the 
> Jabber client. I am unaware of what voice systems are common on 
> computers for the blind, anyone know? I would assume they would be 
> designed to work with any application built for that voice system. Not 
> only is it important to be voice dictation friendly by allowing the user
> to "speak" the IM messages and have them read off to them from the text,
> but also for the client to have "voice bindings" for commands such as 
> creating messages, editing prefernces, and other typically GUI-based 
> actions.


I've been working with open source systems sphinx2(speech in) and festival
(speech out). I've thought about making a jabber client using these. It is
hard to get myself to write it because personaly I don't think I would use
it(as I'm not blind). If I ever get something written I'll be sure to let
someone know, but for those that want to take up the challenge.

Sphinx: http://www.speech.cs.cmu.edu/sphinx/
Festival: http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/festival/

Sphinx would be perfect to handle the commands, such as "Jabber Send
Message To Contact Five".  It picks up words from a list. It wouldn't work
well to type out messages from voice, as its vocabulary is
limited.

Festival would work good to read messages sent to them by others.

I've been working on some voice command stuff with sphinx and perl, I
would be willing to send in patches from time to time but not startup and
be a main developer of such a project.

I just wanted to point some options that are availible to someone working
on this. Is anyone on the list familar with common software used by the
blind, or is there such a thing?



Russell Valentine