This is a good overview. I’d like to add that using the Hawking Toolbar, a free download for Firefox, switch users can access websites with a scanning toolbar that embeds into Firefox. The drawbacks of sites with complicated layouts remains. Also, I would be interested in hearing from folks who have explored this issue with clients who need voice output as well. Currently I have found a couple of Firefox add-ons that will read the web, but they are not switch accessible.
Your review of the toolbar has very useful constructive criticism, including a couple points I hadn’t considered. Thanks!
I plan to fix these weaknesses over the summer. If there’s anything that anyone else thinks would be a use improvement, please let me know here or on the oatsoft site:
The oatsoft site will always have the most up-to-date info (all development, bug reports, etc. is hosted there, and I recommend it to others), however more information is also available at:
Anything that increases accessibility to those who are deaf or hard of hearing can only be a good thing!
Kate
7.
simon till | October 23rd, 2007 at 4:55 pm
I was wondering how to switch from one language to another in windows vista speech recognition tool. My computer is French, it recognises speech in French pretty well, but I would like it to do the same job in English. Are there any plugins to download?
8.
Aaron | November 30th, 2007 at 8:12 pm
You can also install the Speech Recognition from The Office 2003 CD’s if you still have it. It will work with Office 2007 and XP just fine. Just do a customer install from the Office 2003 CD, uncheck all of the Office applications (Word, Excel, etc.) and only install the tools. You may even be able to trim the tools list down to just speech recognition, but I can’t remember for sure.
9.
jennifer silvestri | February 12th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
can you please email me anything you have on being safe for special needs adults. i teach a health and wellnmess program
[...] certainly isn’t the first time that someone has come up with a way of getting computers to respond to brain activity but now there’s finally an actual tangible commercial product on the [...]
Well, the information presented herein is sufficient but it doesn’t solve some basic problems such as what one should do if one wishes to get advantage in Office 2007 despite the fact that the company has removed it.
Take Care.
12.
B L | April 30th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
How do you get to Microsoft Anna? I can’t find it.
>Unfortunately Firefox won’t allow a switch user to access Flash elements. The tab key just skips straight past unless a mouse is used to select the element first.
You know I’ve seen a fairly recent discussion on this over at Mozilla. I think the issue is the Flash plugin from Adobe and not Firefox itself. It might be that the plugin grabs the focus and won’t let go. I think there was an attempt to work with adobe on a solution.
> Please fix it
if you get in contact on the mail list or IRC (Marco Zehe is the a11y QA lead now and *very* helpful), you can find out if a bug exisits or you should file one … http://www.mozilla.org/access/
How are you using the switches? My project Jambu allows switch users to step through the firefox UI and web pages and could be extended to support different scan modes and highlight options (it uses SVG overlay). Currently is in development and Linux/GNOME only.
PS you might like addthis to replace all those social bookmark icons. Marco has used it on his blog and is working with them to resolve a couple of a11y glitches using WAI-ARIA.
14.
Simon | June 3rd, 2008 at 11:55 am
Exactly, the great thing about firefox is that you can submit a bug and if you do it well it will probably, hopefully get fixed….
Gotcha thanks guys. I guess my blog wasn’t the best place to complain about a bug in an open-source project. The bug has now been submitted by Patrick Lauke:
Hey no need to applogise Charlie and looking forward to seeing the new stuff. It’s great you’re doing an OT course, (I thought about it once) I’m sure it will be invaluable.
Re pubs – perhaps you can find one with free wifi (perhaps Wetherspoons). Ale and blogging should go well together (but remember to take your device home)
I probably blog too much
17.
Caleb | January 16th, 2009 at 4:25 am
Windows 7’s On-Screen Keybaord is indeed changed, but not necessarily for the better. I have one problem with it. It excludes the num pad!
18.
John | March 5th, 2009 at 11:20 pm
In Win 7 beta, the program looses the ability to hold extended keys down, like shift, Alt, and Control.
Essentially useless for key combinations without a bug fix.
[...] Please note that the example used here is the Windows XP magnifier (as I believe that this is version of Windows currently most “in play”), but the latest version bundled with Windows 7 is more or less an extension of the XP version with some additional tweaks and some of the Virtual Magnifying Glass and ZoomIT application features included. For specific details about the Windows 7 magnifier take a look at the BLTT post about it. [...]
No Comments yet
1. Andrew Burt, Crick Software | March 19th, 2007 at 3:16 pm
The Anna voice will work with Clicker 5 from version 5.20 onwards. Unfortunately it will not work with Clicker 4.
The reason for this is that Anna is compatible with SAPI 5 only.
With Clicker 5 we support both SAPI 4 and SAPI 5 to allow people to use as many different speech engines as possible.
2. charlie | March 19th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
Thanks for the clarification Andrew.
3. charlie | March 20th, 2007 at 4:42 pm
At the time of writing the BBC Jam website is still active.
You can still grab some of the content to play offline, including the Field Studies mentioned in the main post:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/jam/pots/
You’ll need the special JAM player, available for both PC and Mac.
4. Linda Wilson | April 20th, 2007 at 1:58 am
This is a good overview. I’d like to add that using the Hawking Toolbar, a free download for Firefox, switch users can access websites with a scanning toolbar that embeds into Firefox. The drawbacks of sites with complicated layouts remains. Also, I would be interested in hearing from folks who have explored this issue with clients who need voice output as well. Currently I have found a couple of Firefox add-ons that will read the web, but they are not switch accessible.
5. Brett Clippingdale | April 21st, 2007 at 8:35 pm
Steve Lee from Oatsoft alerted me to this post.
Your review of the toolbar has very useful constructive criticism, including a couple points I hadn’t considered. Thanks!
I plan to fix these weaknesses over the summer. If there’s anything that anyone else thinks would be a use improvement, please let me know here or on the oatsoft site:
http://www.oatsoft.org/Software/hawking-toolbar/view
The oatsoft site will always have the most up-to-date info (all development, bug reports, etc. is hosted there, and I recommend it to others), however more information is also available at:
http://www.clippingdale.com/accessibility/hawking/hawking.html
6. Prestige Network | October 2nd, 2007 at 2:04 pm
Anything that increases accessibility to those who are deaf or hard of hearing can only be a good thing!
Kate
7. simon till | October 23rd, 2007 at 4:55 pm
I was wondering how to switch from one language to another in windows vista speech recognition tool. My computer is French, it recognises speech in French pretty well, but I would like it to do the same job in English. Are there any plugins to download?
8. Aaron | November 30th, 2007 at 8:12 pm
You can also install the Speech Recognition from The Office 2003 CD’s if you still have it. It will work with Office 2007 and XP just fine. Just do a customer install from the Office 2003 CD, uncheck all of the Office applications (Word, Excel, etc.) and only install the tools. You may even be able to trim the tools list down to just speech recognition, but I can’t remember for sure.
9. jennifer silvestri | February 12th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
can you please email me anything you have on being safe for special needs adults. i teach a health and wellnmess program
10. Better Living Through Tec&hellip | February 22nd, 2008 at 6:17 pm
[...] certainly isn’t the first time that someone has come up with a way of getting computers to respond to brain activity but now there’s finally an actual tangible commercial product on the [...]
11. Awais Mushtaq | March 14th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
Well, the information presented herein is sufficient but it doesn’t solve some basic problems such as what one should do if one wishes to get advantage in Office 2007 despite the fact that the company has removed it.
Take Care.
12. B L | April 30th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
How do you get to Microsoft Anna? I can’t find it.
13. Steve Lee | May 31st, 2008 at 9:40 am
HI Charlie
>Unfortunately Firefox won’t allow a switch user to access Flash elements. The tab key just skips straight past unless a mouse is used to select the element first.
You know I’ve seen a fairly recent discussion on this over at Mozilla. I think the issue is the Flash plugin from Adobe and not Firefox itself. It might be that the plugin grabs the focus and won’t let go. I think there was an attempt to work with adobe on a solution.
> Please fix it
if you get in contact on the mail list or IRC (Marco Zehe is the a11y QA lead now and *very* helpful), you can find out if a bug exisits or you should file one …
http://www.mozilla.org/access/
How are you using the switches? My project Jambu allows switch users to step through the firefox UI and web pages and could be extended to support different scan modes and highlight options (it uses SVG overlay). Currently is in development and Linux/GNOME only.
PS you might like addthis to replace all those social bookmark icons. Marco has used it on his blog and is working with them to resolve a couple of a11y glitches using WAI-ARIA.
14. Simon | June 3rd, 2008 at 11:55 am
Exactly, the great thing about firefox is that you can submit a bug and if you do it well it will probably, hopefully get fixed….
S
15. charlie | September 26th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Gotcha thanks guys. I guess my blog wasn’t the best place to complain about a bug in an open-source project. The bug has now been submitted by Patrick Lauke:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=457006
16. Steve Lee | November 28th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
Hey no need to applogise Charlie and looking forward to seeing the new stuff. It’s great you’re doing an OT course, (I thought about it once) I’m sure it will be invaluable.
Re pubs – perhaps you can find one with free wifi (perhaps Wetherspoons). Ale and blogging should go well together (but remember to take your device home)
I probably blog too much
17. Caleb | January 16th, 2009 at 4:25 am
Windows 7’s On-Screen Keybaord is indeed changed, but not necessarily for the better. I have one problem with it. It excludes the num pad!
18. John | March 5th, 2009 at 11:20 pm
In Win 7 beta, the program looses the ability to hold extended keys down, like shift, Alt, and Control.
Essentially useless for key combinations without a bug fix.
19. Magnificent Magnification&hellip | August 2nd, 2009 at 5:55 pm
[...] Please note that the example used here is the Windows XP magnifier (as I believe that this is version of Windows currently most “in play”), but the latest version bundled with Windows 7 is more or less an extension of the XP version with some additional tweaks and some of the Virtual Magnifying Glass and ZoomIT application features included. For specific details about the Windows 7 magnifier take a look at the BLTT post about it. [...]