UltraSonix scope and screen-reader issues (was: Re: UltraSonix screen-reader for X-windows available at BLINUX site)

[Nikhil Nair <nn201@cus.cam.ac.uk>]

On Wed, 9 Oct 1996, michael malver wrote:

>         pardon my ignorance.  I am glad to see that we can use x-windows,
> but will this program also support standard unix shells such as bash, or
> tcsh?

First, I'm no expert on UltraSonix, so take this with a pinch of salt ....
My guess would be `no, unless you run them from inside X'.  The reason I
say this is that the techniques needed for the physical screen-reeading
part are very different - on Linux you would use /dev/vcs* to read the
screen outside X, but this varies between different platforms.  They must
have thought of this problem, though, so maybe I'm just being pessimistic
...

> Also, are there plans to support other synthesizers?  I use a
> keynnote gold internal.  I am pretty sure humanware would give the
> documentation out to a programmer willing to attempt the task.

I think this is the idea, once the port is done.  Again, I'm not really in
touch with the current project, but I can say that UltraSonix was designed
to make this easy.

>         also, I have heard work of trying to make a talking shell for the
> blind.  This bothers me.  I like bas, other may like tcsh, ksh, or whatever.
> Why can't a screen reader be written that is independent of the shell?

I'd be inclined to agree with you - IMHO Braille/speech access software
should be completely independent of applications, shells etc. (not meaning
to take anything away from EmacSpeak, but that may not help vi users
much).  Again, though, I'm afraid I don't actually know about this project
...

Can someone else be more helpful here?

Nikhil.

--
Nikhil Nair
Trinity College, Cambridge, England
Tel.: +44 1223 368353
Email: nn201@cus.cam.ac.uk
       nnair@debian.org