The Technology Group at APH has been busy! As you'll see from the contents of this issue of APH Technology Update, APH has released several new technology products. Talking Typer for Windows®, Math Flash®, Road Runner®, and Braille 'n Speak Scholar® have all been released since the last issue. This issue of APH Technology Update contains articles on all four of these products.
Along with the traditional ordering method, you may download a demonstration of the program for evaluation. If, after trying the program, you decide you like the software, you may call an APH Customer Service Representative with your credit card number, and they will supply you with a key number that transforms the demo you already have into a fully functioning, registered copy of the software. This is known as the electronic distribution method of purchase. As you can imagine, you'll never be frustrated with back orders on the electronic distribution versions of any of the software packages. Note that due to the way credit card orders are processed, it is possible that these orders may take up to 24 hours to process, in which case, the Customer Service Representative will call you back the next day with your key.
Finally, along with the traditional method and electronic distribution, APH now offers site licenses of its new software products. The site license is good for a single classroom and allows you to use the program on up to 35 machines simultaneously. You must first purchase the program through either the traditional method or through electronic distribution before you can use a site license, but the site license offers you an extremely economical method of supplying an entire classroom with the ability to take advantage of these great learning experiences.
In addition to all the new products recently introduced in the technology area, APH is showing its commitment to this area by hiring two new programmers. Mario Eiland and Rodger Smith introduce themselves in this issue. The technology group is extremely pleased to have these two new programmers on staff, and look forward to a long working relationship with them.
As the technology group formalized a procedure for handling demo
software, they immediately realized that they left someone out--Learn
Keys®.
Learn Keys was released before the demo policy and procedures were complete, so the technology group went back and updated Learn Keys so that it, too, is available as a demo you can purchase through the new electronic distribution method. A site license for Learn Keys is also available.
Learn Keys costs $14.00. Its catalog number is D-03410-00 for the CD-ROM and D-03410-ED for electronic distribution.
You may also purchase a site license that lets you use Learn Keys in a single room on up to 35 computers. The site license requires that you already have the CD-ROM or electronic distribution version of Learn Keys and costs $75.00. The catalog number for the site license is D-03410-SL.
For more information about Learn Keys, see the previous issue of APH Technology Update or see the Web site at www.aph.org/tech.
In the last issue of APH Technology
Update, you learned about an accessible new toy called Bopit®.
Shortly after that article was written, the makers of Bopit released a
new, improved version called Bopit Extreme.
Bopit Extreme works like Bopit, except that in addition to Bop,
Twist, and Pull, Bopit Extreme adds Spin and Flick! The shape of the
toy is totally new, too. Bopit Extreme is shaped a lot like a steering
wheel with gaps in the top and bottom. At the ends of the areas that
lead to the gaps are the controls, Twist and Pull on the right and Flick
and Spin on the left. The bop control is in the middle, where you'd
think of a horn on an older automobile.
Bopit Extreme is also much louder than the original Bopit, and it remembers the high score achieved on the unit. It also gives commentary on how you're doing at the end of a game--whether you want it or not!
Most importantly, Bopit Extreme is still accessible and even a little
more fun and challenging than the original.
As computers migrate to nearly every part of our lives for both work
and leisure activities, the need to know how to type steadily increases.
Traditional typing texts are a good place to get started with learning
the keyboard, but with the special keys found on a PC that were never on
a typewriter, something more is needed. Typing tutor programs attempt
to take this fact into account and add the additional benefits of an
interactive training environment into the curriculum. Unfortunately, the
commercially available typing tutor programs are especially difficult to
use with access programs like screen readers and screen magnifiers.
Screen Readers are designed to convey the text on the screen to a blind
user with either speech synthesis or refreshable Braille. Typing tutor
programs, however, generally present the lessons in a fashion that
makes it difficult or impossible for the screen reader to accurately
convey this information. Similarly, low vision users have a hard time
with traditional typing tutor programs because the screen is so busy,
and the specific letters to type don't stay in predictable areas on the
screen. Add to this the fact that the program is timing you while it
presents its lessons and the fact that most people learning to type are
fairly new computer users and have little experience with the details of
adjusting their access program to accommodate the behavior of such
interactive software, and you can see why Talking Typer™ for Windows®
was designed to have its own accessible environment.
Talking Typer uses your PC's sound card and speakers to verbally announce the next keys you are to type in its drills. The letters are also placed in a predictable area on the screen and rendered in a large, clear Verdana font, so low vision users have no trouble tracking the display.
The lessons are designed to make the drill presentation configurable.
If you decide a lesson should spell out letters word by word and
pause between words while the student types each word, you can do that.
If you decide the words should be pronounced as words and the
program should pause between each word while the student types, you can
do that, too. You may also design lessons so the content is
presented a phrase at a time, making the content of the lesson advance
as the student types the phrase.
If the student doesn't understand a word or phrase, he can press the Tab key to stop the timing clock and repeat the material he is expected to type next. The timing clock doesn't begin again until the pronunciation of the word or phrase is complete or until the student strikes another key, so there is no timing penalty for listening to the material again.
If the student misses a letter in the word, Talking Typer makes a buzzing noise and announces the remaining letters of the word to type. As the student progresses through the lesson, Talking Typer feeds the new typing drill content to him as he needs it and as the lesson has been designed to do.
The student may pause the drill at any time to check his progress by pressing the Escape key. (Escape is a key covered early in the lesson sequence.) When the student checks his progress, he may also take advantage of Talking Typer's built-in accessibility environment. Using the arrow keys, he can move through the contents of the Results Status pane either a line at a time, or letter by letter. Pressing Tab moves to the Instructions pane of the main screen, where instructions and helpful hints about finger placement and key location are displayed. Again, the student may use the arrow keys to examine this information in detail. Pressing Enter returns to the drill. When the student presses Enter to resume the lesson, Talking Typer restarts the timing clock and continues with the drill content from the point where it was last completed.
In addition to drills, each lesson contains a game, dictation capabilities, an area to explore the keyboard, and a place to perform open typing.
The game is called Hurry Scurry, and it helps increase typing speed and accuracy by presenting lesson content in a fun environment where the letters or phrases move toward the edge of the screen and disappear if you don't type them quickly enough. Hurry Scurry also contains a Hall of Fame, where the top ten scores are stored and displayed.
The Explore the Keyboard screen in Talking Typer lets your student explore without expectation for specific input. He may take his time and discover what each and every key on the keyboard is called. As he presses the key, Talking Typer announces its name. This works for all the keys on the keyboard, even those that would normally do something else. Take the Windows key, for instance. Normally, when you press Windows, the Start menu appears. While your student is in the Explore the keyboard area of Talking Typer, however, pressing Windows merely makes the program announce, either "Left Windows" or "Right Windows." Pressing the Escape key twice quickly makes Talking Typer return to the main screen.
Many times, you will want your student to practice open typing, where there is no structure or expectation involved. Talking Typer's Open Typing screen is the place for that. Open Typing is an Edit control that talks, so in addition to typing, your student can get a good idea about the control keys used in a word processing environment.
Talking Typer supports a highly configurable lesson editing environment, so you can change the way the supplied lessons work, or you may add additional lessons to those already supplied.
Best of all, you don't have to design any lessons at all; Talking Typer comes supplied with lessons for every key on the keyboard. It begins with the traditional keys to teach the home row, then adds lessons for some of the more common keys used to control the PC (like tab and Enter), and finally includes lessons for more advanced control keys like Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down.
While Talking Typer works great in a stand-alone environment for a single end user, it is also designed to work in a classroom environment. It lets each student log on with his own account and tracks the student's progress through the lessons. Talking Typer also lets you decide how the student should advance to the next lesson and what criteria he must meet before advancement occurs.
The online and cassette editions of this newsletter contain an Audio Overview of Talking Typer. If you are reading the paper edition of this newsletter, you can point your browser to www.aph.org/tech to play the Audio Overview.
Talking Typer for Windows is available now. You may download a demo of the program from the APH Web site at www.aph.org/tech.
Talking Typer costs $79.00. Its catalog number is D-03430-00 for the CD-ROM version and D-03430-ED for the electronic distribution. You may also purchase a Single Classroom License Pack that lets you use your existing Talking Typer program on up to 35 computers in a single room. The catalog number for the Single Classroom License Pack is D-03430-SL, and its price is $400.00.
By Keith Creasy
The explosion of the Internet and the World Wide Web (WWW) brought with it a new way of creating and viewing documents. All documents (web pages) on the WWW use a special set of tags referred to as Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML). HTML is a way to separate the content of a document from its format when viewing it on a computer. With early versions of HTML, most formatting decisions were made by the "client" program or browser. The author could tell the browser that a certain string of words was a heading, but the browser was responsible for displaying the text in a way that was appropriate for such a heading.
Because Web authors became more sophisticated and required more control over what was seen by the person viewing their documents, new features were added to HTML. Using special tags to control the font face, size, color, and other characteristics of the text worked, but introduced a problem when changes to the text were needed. Also, if more than one individual was responsible for authoring different pages of a Web site, inconsistencies were often caused when one author did not exactly follow the same formatting patterns as others. An organization might spend weeks developing a web site where all of the level 1 headings were in Times New Roman, 14 point, and red text. Later, a decision might be made to change to Letter Gothic, 18 point, and blue text. Every page would then have to be carefully edited. Such a change might cost hours or even days of labor if the site was fairly large.
The solution to problems such as the ones described above came in the form of "Cascading Style Sheets" (CSS). Using style sheets, it is possible to define such characteristics as color, font face, size, alignment, and others just once and then apply those attributes to every page of a site.
Another benefit of using a style sheet is the ability to have text displayed for easy viewing by those with low vision. Each document displayed with Internet Explorer® can have up to three style sheets applied to it. The first style sheet to be applied is the default style sheet for the browser. Every HTML element, such as a paragraph, heading, or list item, is given a default appearance by the default style sheet. Next, the user of the browser can specify a style sheet that will override any or all of the styles specified in the default style sheet. For example, a user could have a style sheet that specifies a dark background and light text for the body of the Web document. Finally, the author of the page can specify a style sheet that can override any or all of the styles specified in the first two. This gives the author ultimate control over the appearance of the document, while giving the user control over anything not explicitly defined by the author. Internet Explorer gives the user the added power to turn off the color and font settings specified by the author in the "Accessibility Options," effectively giving the user final control over these attributes.
Creating and using a style sheet to customize the appearance of your Internet Explorer browser isn’t difficult. You only need a text editor, such as "Word Pad" and, of course, the browser itself. Here are the steps to creating and using a simple style sheet. This is a very simple example, but should help get you started. You can also create style sheets for your own Web pages. I’ll show you how to create a simple style sheet, use it with Internet Explorer, and use it in your own Web Documents.
To create a simple style sheet, open "Word Pad" from the Windows accessories menu and enter the following text:
By
body {
color: yellow;
background: blue;
font-family: "Verdana"
}
p {
font-size: 24pt
}
h1 {
font-size: 48pt;
color: white
}
h2 {
font-size: 42pt
}
The first word of the text listed above, "body," refers to the tag that defines the entire body of the HTML (Web) document. In style-sheet terms this is called the "selector." After the selector comes a set of opening and closing braces where the "rules" for the style selector are specified. Here, I've used three rules: one for the font family, one for the background color, and one for the text color. I also define a font size for the level one headings, H1, and the level 2 headings, H2.
Once the text has been entered, save it as "C:\MYSTYLE.CSS" and close Word Pad.
To apply the style sheet we just created, you will need to open Internet Explorer and tell it to use your style sheet in addition to the default style sheet. Follow these steps:
Now, when you load a document into Internet Explorer, you should see the page displayed in the large Verdana type. If you don't, it probably means the author created a style sheet that is overriding your settings and the item to ignore font style and/or sizes is not checked. Remember, the author has ultimate control over how the page is presented.
You can use your style sheets to dress up your own web pages, or to make changes easier. As the author of the page you will have ultimate control; but be careful not to specifically set properties that can just as well be left up to the browser or end user to set.
As an example, if I wanted to cause the page that this article is on to use my style sheet, I would put the following at the beginning of my HTML document:
<HTML><HEAD><TITLE> Style Sheets Make Creating and Managing Web Documents Easier</TITLE> <LINK REL=STYLESHEET HREF="FILE:C:\MYSTYLE.CSS" TYPE="test/css"> </HEAD><BODY> ...(body of article) </BODY></HTML>
There are actually two other ways to put style rules into your HTML document. You can use the "STYLE" tag to put a block of style rules directly into the heading of an HTML document, or you can put "inline" style rules into other tags that appear within the body of your document.
If you want to apply a set of style rules to a single document you might use the style tag as follows:
<head><TITLE>
Style Sheets Make Creating and Managing Web Documents Easier
</TITLE>
<STYLE TYPE="text/css">
body {
color: yellow;
background: blue;
font-family: "Verdana"
}
p {
font-size: 24pt
}
h1 {
font-size: 48pt;
color: white
}
h2 {
font-size: 42pt
}
</STYLE>
</HEAD><BODY>
...
To apply style rules to a single element of your Web page, you can use "inline" style attributes. For example, you could change the margin of a specific paragraph by using the following tag:
<P STYLE="margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0.5in">
Try experimenting with style rules and style sheets in your own HTML documents. For more details and information on cascading style sheets you can go to www.w3.org/Style/CSS/#learn
Educational software from the commercial market is among the most
difficult to use with access equipment. It is for that reason that APH
began an effort to produce high-quality educational software that
doesn't need access equipment to work for blind and visually impaired
students and adults. Math Flash is one of the first programs to meet
this goal. We hope that the program will become a success in the
regular commercial market for educational software and pave the way for
other software publishers to see that accessible software doesn't have
to be boring.
Math Flash uses high quality digitized human speech and an animated character to present basic math drill, practice, and testing in a fun and entertaining presentation. Math Flash includes support for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. The division supports problems with or without remainders and lets you decide if the program should block obvious division problems like ones where the number gets divided by 1 or itself. The problems all support both positive and negative numbers in the range from about -46000 to 46000, but you can customize the problems that get presented to include any or all of the operations and the range of the numbers to use for that drill. You can also include your own problems by typing them at the Customize problems screen that is accessible through the program's main menu.
When you first start Math Flash, it uses the document you last used
and immediately begins presenting problems. On screen, you see one of
several animated characters you can choose, and you hear APH's
professional narrators Lou Harpenau and Kerry Cundiff announce the
problems and provide the feedback for the keys you type in response to
the program's prompts.
When you type your response, Math Flash plays a sound then a verbal response to your answer. If the answer is correct, the animated character shows his admiration for your abilities and a positive sound gets played along with a fun, positive verbal response like, "You're Great!" If, on the other hand, you get the answer wrong, the animated character might shake his head no; you get a buzzing or other negative sound, and the verbal response might be something like, "Its Homework Time." If you answered incorrectly, Math Flash gives you another try to get the answer right. You can tell the program how many times it should allow for wrong answers before it provides the correct answer and moves on to the next problem.
When you reach the end of the drill, Math Flash lets you know how many of the problems you answered correctly and how long it took you to do so. If you got them all correct, the animated character also gets very excited and travels around the screen jumping with joy. Math Flash might say, "Congratulations, you answered 10 out of 10 correctly in 38 seconds."
In addition to drill and practice, Math Flash lets you test your students. The Customize Problems screen has an option called Document Type that lets you choose among Drill, Test, or Continuous.
The drills work as described in the previous paragraphs. Tests work in much the same way, except you don't get feedback about whether you answered the problems correctly until the end of the test, and there is no opportunity to answer the problem again once the test is complete. When you select the Test Document Type, you may also elect to put a time limit on the test. If the student isn't finished with the problems when this time limit expires, Math Flash announces, "Time Is Up," and asks the user to press Enter to grade the test. Once the test is graded, the student can review the results of his test by using the Page Up and Page Down keys to move from problem to problem and examine his response and its correctness.
The Customize Problems screen is where you decide what kind of problems Math Flash uses and what kind of presentation to use to display those problems.
You can either supply a set of criteria to allow Math Flash to randomly generate problems, or you can type in a specific list of problems to get presented. You can also tell Math Flash whether or not you wanted your listed problems presented in the order you entered them or if you would rather have Math Flash randomize the presentation.
Once you have created a document with the problems you want in the Customize problems screen, you can save the document for later use. Again, Math Flash automatically starts with the last document you used, and you can use the Open command to select other documents you have created.
The online and cassette editions of this newsletter contain an Audio Overview of Math Flash. If you are reading the paper edition of this newsletter, you can access the Audio Overview at www.aph.org/tech.
Math Flash is available now. You may download a demo of the program at www.aph.org/tech.
Math Flash costs $24. its catalog number is D-19910-00 for CD-ROM and D-19910-ED for electronic distribution.
The Single Classroom License Pack for Math Flash lets you use the program on up to 35 computers in a single room. You must already have Math Flash to use the site license.
The site license costs $125, and its catalog number is D-19910-SL.
As the Internet explodes and the pace of our lives becomes faster, most of
us find we have increasing amounts of material to read. The advent of
the PC has been a tremendous access breakthrough for blind students and
professionals, but reading has traditionally meant being chained to the
computer. Road Runner changes all that.
Road Runner is a small device (not much larger than a single cassette tape) that is used to read books away from your computer. It uses a high quality, built-in RC Systems DoubleTalk® speech synthesizer to read, and it holds about 2000 pages of text. Road Runner is powered with two AA batteries, which last for about 50 hours of continuous reading.
Road Runner comes with the following:
Here is how it works: You connect your Road Runner to one of your PC's communications ports with the supplied cable, then you run a program on your PC to mark the books you want to send to Road Runner. Once you mark the books, you press the Download button, and the communications software, Road Runner Down Link, compresses and encodes the text, then sends it to the Road Runner. Next you unhook Road Runner from the PC, plug in a set of headphones (also supplied) and press the buttons on Road Runner to control your reading environment or select the books to read.
Road Runner's keypad is arranged much like a telephone's keypad. The 2 key acts as the units Play / Stop function. When you press 2, the unit begins reading. You press 2 again to stop. While the unit is reading, you press 1 and 3 to move back or forward a sentence at a time. If the unit is not reading, the 1 and 3 move by words.
Obtaining books in electronic format is accomplished in one of the following ways:
The CD that comes with Road Runner contains over 1700 books including classic literature, history, and reference material.
When one thinks of references to electronic text available on the Internet, the Gutenberg Project comes first to mind. The Gutenberg Project is a library of several thousand books in the public domain. They are freely available from several places on the Internet. www.gutenberg.net is a good place to get books and a list of other sites where the Gutenberg Project material is archived. A group of interested individuals volunteers to scan or type these books into plain ASCII files and make them available for free to anyone who wants to read them.
While the Gutenberg Project is admirable and certainly provides some interesting reading material, chances are you already have subject matter that your study or profession requires. Most likely, you'll have to either obtain this material from other places on the Internet or by scanning it in with an OCR program.
As the growth of the Internet explodes, so does the quality and quantity of material in electronic format. There are hundreds of magazines, newsletters, newspapers, and books available from various places on the Internet. We already mentioned the Gutenberg Project. What follows is a list of some interesting places to obtain electronic reading material, but the most important thing to keep in mind when looking for text on the Internet is to search often. Don't be surprised to find new listings every time you do. Use key words like etext, electronic text, ebooks, online books, and online newsletters. Any of the major search engines will yield results with these key words. If you get too many hits or if you want to narrow the scope of your search, try adding key words for the subject material you're looking for. Ask Jeeves® at www.aj.com is a good search engine that submits your search request to several of the other popular search engines. You may also want to try Alta Vista® at www.altavista.com, Lycos® at www.lycos.com, and Yahoo® at www.yahoo.com for good search engines that will all find more material than you might think. For an extremely speech friendly interface that lets you select the search engine you want to use, try www.seti-search.com.
One relatively new phenomena is the advent of electronic publishers. Electronic publishers are alternatives to traditional paper publishing, and they represent a breakthrough for the amount of material available to blind and visually impaired people.
Electronic publishers market themselves to both readers and authors. The reader gets a book for less than he can purchase it on paper because it is easier to distribute, and the authors get their work published because there are no high initial costs to get the book printed and distributed. It is truly a win-win situation. The only slight drawback is that you won't find Daniel Steel or Robert Ludlum at the electronic publishers. You are more likely to find new authors who cannot get published by the traditional publishers or who find that electronic distribution works better for them. Authors also receive a much higher royalty from electronic books because there are no high printing and distribution costs.
It is nice to be able to browse the titles without sighted assistance, and when you purchase the book, you can begin reading it immediately instead of waiting for days while you scan the book into your OCR program.
www.booklocker.com is an example of such an electronic publishing house. They have hundreds of books to choose from in a number of categories. Their prices range from just over $5 to around $20 per title. Their ordering system works well with speech, and you will get your book emailed to you within hours of your purchase.
www.hardshell.com is another electronic publishing house that sells books online.
www.netbooks.com sells books in its online book store. This site also offers free books.
One thing you will have to be careful of and aware of is the format in which the books are supplied. PDF files are the worst, and you will have to convert them to text before you can do anything with them. PDF stands for Page Description Format, and while they do a great job of showing what the printed page looks like on a computer screen, they don't maintain any of the structure of the original work. Fortunately, Adobe offers a text extraction utility that does a pretty good job at converting text from .PDF to .TXT format.
Likewise, you will have to convert HTML into text before you can upload it to Road Runner. Fortunately, this is usually very easy to do. Consult your browser's documentation for details about your specific program, but in general, you can use the Save As function from the File menu in Windows browsers to save the document as plain text. If you are using Lynx, use the Print command and select Save as a Local File to convert the HTML into text.
In addition to electronic publishing houses that sell books to you, there are lots of places on the Internet to obtain material for free. Cathy's News Stand at www.cathyanne.com is a great source for electronic text of all kinds. Cathy's Web page contains links to magazines, reference works, newspapers, and just about anything else you can think of. Cathy makes it her business to keep up to date on electronic sources of reading material, and she shares that work through her Web page.
Electric Books at www.electricbook.com is another good place to start when looking for material, especially about a specific subject. This site categorizes its magazine listings by subject and its newspapers by state, so it is fairly easy to narrow down the amount of material you have to plow through.
Ask Magpie Magazines at www.askmagpie.com contains links to over 7000 online magazines and journals. As they say, "The bigger the Web gets, the harder it gets to find what you want." Ask Magpie Magazines lets you search by category or travel through common categories to find what you want. Once you select a category, Ask Magpie presents a sub-category, so it is fairly painless to narrow your focus through its database. Once you do find the specific magazine you're looking for (or find a new one you didn't know about,) you can go directly to that magazine's site with the provided links.
It should be noted that not all magazine Web sites contain the entire text of their magazine. Some provide the entire text, of course, but others provide only teasers or supplemental material. Others offer back issues online.
When looking for a specific magazine online, try just using that magazine's address as the URL you want to open with your browser's Open command. www.readersdigest.com, www.newsweek.com, and www.time.com are all valid addresses that will take you right to the site you imagine they would.
The APH Technology Update is available at www.aph.org/techup.
The Library of Congress maintains an excellent page of etext sources at www.loc.gov/global/etext/etext.html. It contains links to magazines, newsletters, and government publications and documents.
In addition to Web sites you can travel to, many newsletters supply a service that will email you the latest issue when it becomes available. There are two magazines of particular interest to blind consumers that you'll probably want to subscribe to and read with your Road Runner right away. They are ACB's Braille Forum and NFB's Braille Monitor.
http://e-newsletters.internet.com is a great site that holds over 2000 electronic newsletters from a wide variety of topics. Some of the newsletters are paid subscription types, but many are also free. There are hundreds of sites like this one that gather and distribute email newsletters, and you can find them by using the word "newsletters" in your favorite search engine.
Note that when you get a newsletter emailed to you, you will also have to save the text of that file into a .txt file. Some newsletters come as part of the main message in which case you'd use your email program's Save As option to save the email as a text file. Others come as an attachment to your message. In that case, you will have to use your email program's Save Attachments command. The attachment will generally come as a text file already, and you can specify what format you want your attachments in when you subscribe to the newsletter.
In addition to all the generally available electronic text you may find on the Internet, don't forget to check APH's Louis database of accessible materials for electronic textbooks from a variety of alternate media suppliers.
The Louis database of accessible materials is accessible through APH's main Web page at www.aph.org. In addition to Braille, large print, and recorded listings, Louis contains an electronic text media type, and you can use that as a criterion for searching the database.
If you want to read the latest best seller or on a subject of fairly narrow focus, you'll most likely have to buy a printed book and scan it into your computer with an OCR program.
OCR programs come in two flavors--off the shelf packages intended for the general market and specialty programs designed with the blind computer user in mind. Omni Page® and Text Bridge® are examples of the former. These programs do a good job at character recognition and are useable by a blind person with a screen reader or magnifier program. OpenBook® from Arkenstone and K 1000® from Kurzweil Educational Systems, Inc. are examples of specialty programs. You'll generally pay several times the price of off-the-shelf packages for these specialized programs, but they offer a lot of benefits for a blind user, too. These programs not only do a fantastic job at recognition, but they also provide features like page description and orientation information and an environment in which to read the book. Of course, if you'll be doing most of your reading with Road Runner, you won't be using the built-in reading environment much.
The disadvantage of scanning, of course, is the time it takes to get your text into electronic format. It is generally possible to get an average sized book completely scanned in less than 8 hours, but those are boring hours. One way to help pass the time while scanning is to have your Road Runner on hand while scanning. You can listen to another book or magazine while you scan in a new one.
Another disadvantage of scanning is that the text is never going to be as good as text you get directly from the Internet. As good as OCR is now, it can't compare with text that began in electronic format.
As you can tell from this article, the question is not "Where do I get text for Road Runner?" It is really, "How do I narrow down the amount of material to read?" Hopefully, this article gives you some places to look for reading material, but more importantly, it gives you ways to work smart while finding the text that interests you.
The online and cassette editions of this newsletter contain an Audio Overview of Road Runner. If you are reading this newsletter in print, you can point your browser to www.aph.org/tech to play the Audio Overview.
Road Runner is available now. It costs $299, and its catalog number is 1-03940-00.
By Rodger Smith
Let Me Introduce Myself.
I have been at the American Printing House for the Blind for 5 years. During this time I have held a variety of positions, including computer operator, database research assistant, and computer programmer. Since January, I have been working for Larry Skutchan in the Department of Educational Research as a computer programmer.
I am part of a team whose goal is to develop software applications and products that will be used as education tools at home and in the classroom. We place our emphasis on producing a quality product at an affordable price. These self-voicing products will be both educational and fun to use. This should make learning an enjoyable experience.
In the upcoming months I will be working on a variety of educational products, one of which is Talking Puzzles. Talking Puzzles is a program that generates hidden word and crossword puzzles. It will be a self-voicing program that does not require a speech synthesizer, a screen access program, or screen enlargement program. It will run on Windows 95 or later versions. Blind and visually impaired individuals will find Talking Puzzles entertaining and easy to use. Talking Puzzles is scheduled for release late in 2000. You will hear more about Talking Puzzles and other products in the coming months.
I am looking forward to working in the Department of Educational Research with Larry and the rest of the team.
By Mario Eiland
Though a native of Columbia, South America, I have lived most of my life in Oregon. My passion for computers began in elementary school and flourished while attending Oregon State University, from which I received a B.A. in Business Administration with an emphasis on Management Information Systems (MIS).
At Oregon State, I worked frequently with the Science Access Project (SAP) research group, headed by Dr. John Gardener. My main contribution to SAP was the beta testing of several projects, including the TRIANGLE program and the Dots Plus system.
TRIANGLE is a DOS computer program designed for print-impaired students and professionals working in math, science, and engineering fields. This program uses linear notation for representing mathematical expressions and provides means for evaluating and plotting expressions. The graphing calculator feature displays graphs and functions in visual, auditory, and tactile formats.
Dots Plus is a system using a combination of Braille and raised graphics. Its letters are standard Braille. Users have a choice of a six- or eight-dot font to represent capital letters and other symbols having a Braille cell representation.
My career at APH began in September of 1998 as a database technical support specialist. Work consisted of designing, implementing, and maintaining The Fred's Head Database, which contains life-improving tips and techniques used by blind and visually impaired individuals. The Fred's Head Database can be accessed through the APH home Web site.
On January 10, 2000, I began working for APH's Department of Educational Research as a computer programmer. My main responsibility is to implement a Braille translator to our current APH Speech Environment.
I look forward to working with my new colleagues and enjoy making a difference in the lives of blind children.
By Keith Creasy
A Brief Look Back:
Since the writing of the first article on Internet e-mail, there has been an upgrade from Outlook Express®, version 4 to version 5. There are a few differences between version 4 and 5, so everyone needs to be aware that when I refer to features of Outlook Express, I am referring to features as they appear in version 5. One handy trick I've discovered in Version 5 (it may have existed in version 4 as well) makes reading through messages very easy. With the focus (cursor) on the message list, you can use the up and down arrows to browse through messages and read through those messages in the preview pane with the spacebar. Since I have my screen reader set to automatically read the preview pane when it changes, I don't even have to tab to it. In other words, I can read through all of my mail without moving off the message list at all. Another addition to the default window of Outlook Express 5 is the "Address Book" pane. That means there are now four panes open when you read mail: the message list, the preview pane, the address book, and the folder list. The tab key is still used to move from one pane to another.
Almost every e-mail client program has some sort of "address book" used to store names, addresses, and other information about people to whom you write regularly. This is almost a necessity with Internet e-mail since there are hieroglyphs less cryptic than some e-mail addresses. An address such as crj432@ns.acu.ws.edu, for example, might be very difficult to remember. However, by using the address book, you can assign the "real name" or a "nickname" to the Internet e-mail address so you don't have to remember the Internet address at all. For example, using the fictitious address above, one might want to use the real name of that person instead of the cumbersome Internet e-mail address. An address-book entry of "Christopher Robin Jones" could be created, making the address much easier to remember. That seems well enough so far. "Christopher Robin Jones" is easy to remember, but it's still a lot of typing. To help alleviate that, most clients let you assign a nickname to everyone in the address book. Thus "Christopher Robin Jones" could be referred to as "Chris" in the address book. Now, rather than typing in the cryptic e-mail address or the lengthy name, you need only enter "Chris" into the "To:" field of a new message and Outlook Express will know that the Internet mail address of the person is crj432@???, . . . now what was that address again? Obviously, the address book is a great idea, but you probably need to know how to get the entries in there in the first place, and how you can edit them to make sure they are as you want them to be. We will cover that topic next.
There are three ways to get to the address book in Outlook Express. One way is to bring up the menu bar, move to the "Tools" menu, and then move down to the "Address Book" option. There is also a hot key, ALT+SHIFT+B, which will immediately bring up the address book. You can also get there by tabbing to the "Address Book" pane of the Outlook Express window and pressing the right mouse button, SHIFT+F10, or the "context-menu key" on your keyboard. Then you just select "Address Book" from the context menu that is presented. You can choose "Add" from within the address book to add a new contact or select it from the context menu. There you can enter any information you have for that contact. Another convenient way to add a new contact to your address book is to go to the "Tools" menu by pressing ALT+T and choose "Add Sender to Address Book." This will add the sender's name and e-mail address to the address book instantly. You can then add or change information about that contact by tabbing to the "Address Book" pane of the main window, selecting the new contact, pressing the right mouse button or "Application" key, and choosing "Properties." You will be presented with a dialog that lets you edit the contact information. Once you are done, select "OK" and press the spacebar or click with the mouse.
The term "mailing lists," when used in the context of the Internet, refers to a specific kind of service. An Internet mailing list is a kind of round-table discussion in which an individual's e-mail message is automatically delivered to every other member of the mailing list and vice versa. There are mailing lists that cover almost any topic imaginable, and the number of lists and participants continues to grow. In order to participate in an Internet mailing list, you must "subscribe" to the list. Some mailing lists are open to the public, meaning anyone can subscribe and post messages. Others are less public and might not allow just anyone to post messages; some might even be private and limit the subscribers to a select group of individuals. There are several "lists of lists" on the World Wide Web (WWW) that will point you to literally thousands of mailing lists you can subscribe to. One list I've had some experience with is called "blind-l." Blind-l is a list for the discussion of issues that concern individuals who are blind and their families. It is a public list, meaning anyone can subscribe and almost any subject is acceptable since blind people and their families tend to have interests and concerns that vary greatly. For a sample of the kinds of lists available try searching on this page: http://catalog.com/vivian/interest-group-search.html.
If you don't see any lists that interest you, start your own list. Almost anyone can set up a mailing list, provided they have access to a "list server," the software used to manage and operate the e-mail to and from the list subscribers. My ISP, Iglou, offers mailing lists as a service, and for a modest fee, will set up a list for anyone.
One very important feature of Outlook Express is the one allowing the user to set rules for sorting and handling some messages automatically. This feature is particularly handy if you subscribe to mailing lists, as I do, but just want to see your personal mail without taking the time to look through messages from mailing lists.
When I upgraded to Outlook Express 5, I found the message rules feature wasn't as easy to work with using speech as the old "Inbox Assistant" in Outlook Express 4 was. Still, it was accessible and quite useful once I figured out a few of its quirks. Allow me to use an example for setting up a message rule. In this case I'll use the steps to set a rule that will collect all the messages from a mailing list on church music and put them in a specific folder when they arrive.
The mailing list address always appears in the "To" field and begins with "church-music." In order to set up the rule for sorting these messages, press ALT+T to bring up the "Tools" menu. Use the down arrow key to find "Message Rules" and press the enter key. You will be presented with a dialog containing a list of the current rules and buttons to add, remove, or close the dialog. Since we are going to add a new rule, tab down to the "Add" button and press the spacebar. The next dialog that appears will have two lists for the "Criteria" and "Actions" for the message rule. You must move up and down with the arrow keys until you hear the criterion you want to use. In this case, the criterion we want to use is "The 'to' field contains people." When you hear it, press the spacebar to select it. Next, press the tab key to go to the "Actions" list.
The same method that was used to select a criterion is used for selecting an action. Be sure to use the spacebar to select the action or actions you want to use. In this case the action we want is "Move to the specified folder." Pressing the spacebar was the cause of some confusion for me when I first attempted this. In most Windows-style lists, the item in the list that has the focus is automatically selected. This seems not to be the case here, so you must explicitly select the criteria and actions you want to use by pressing the spacebar.
When you press the tab key again, you get to the third step in setting up a message rule. Now, you must enter the specific information you want the rule to work on. In this case, we have to specify "people" and a "folder." Again, you use the up and down arrow keys to find the item you want to work on. When you hear it, press the enter key to bring up another dialog. These dialogs have a single edit line and buttons to add and close the dialog. Assuming "Contains people" was selected first, each address or portion of an address must be entered and the "Add" button pressed. In this case there is only one, and we can just use the first part of the mailing list address, "church-music," as the text. Tab to the "Close" button and press the spacebar once. "Church music" has been added.
The next item to deal with is the folder in which the message will be moved. Move the cursor up or down to find the "Specify" option. Press the enter key to bring up the dialog to select a folder. In this case, you have to have a new folder in which to put the messages from the church-music mailing list. Tab down to the "New" button and press the spacebar. Type in the name of the folder, such as "church music," and press the enter key. Once this is done, the dialog to select the folder will reappear and the new folder will already be selected. Tab to the "OK" button and press the spacebar to get back to the message rule dialog.
The next tab down in the message rule dialog is step 4, the name of the rule. You can accept the default name, which will be something like "new rule #1," or type in some other name that is more meaningful. When you are finished, you can tab to "Close" and press the spacebar, or you can choose to apply the new rule to the existing inbox folder. Applying the rule will sort existing messages in that folder or perform whatever action you have specified.
I hope the tips I've offered for using the address book, mailing lists, and message rules are helpful. There are many more tasks you can accomplish with these features, but this is supposed to be an article after all, and not a book. In the meantime, happy e-mailing!
By Rob Meredith
APH has recently introduced a new electronic notetaker that replaces the
Braille 'n Speak® Classic. It is called the Braille 'n Speak Scholar. The
Braille 'n Speak Scholar is a customized and exclusive version of the very
popular Blazie notetaker. It is most similar to the Braille 'n Speak 640, but
with some special features that make it more appropriate for use by school
students.
The Braille 'n Speak line of notetakers have been around since 1987. They are small portable devices that use a Braille keyboard for input and synthetic speech for output. Text can be entered in Grade 2 Braille, and can be back-translated for printing.
The Braille 'n Speak Scholar is appropriate for any Braille user who needs a compact device for taking notes and retrieving information. It is suitable for use by grade-school students as well as adults. With the Scholar, a student can take notes, make lists, complete homework assignments, perform calculations, read electronic text files, time various events, and much more. When the Scholar is connected to a printer, anything in it can be printed.
The Scholar offers all of the features of the Braille 'n Speak Classic. These
include the word processor, the clock, the stopwatch, and the scientific
calculator. In short, if you can perform a function with the Classic, you can
perform it equally as well, or better, with the Scholar.
Important new features the Scholar offers include:
The Scholar comes with a new serial cable that facilitates easy connection to a PC compatible computer. One end of this cable connects to one of the 8-pin female serial ports on the Scholar, and the other end connects to a 9-pin male serial port on a PC. This makes direct connection to most PC compatible machines totally painless. Just plug it in and go! If you need other cables, APH offers both a parallel converter cable and an ImageWriter-compatible cable as optional items.
The Scholar package also includes the following accessories:
The included disk contains some useful programs that can enhance your use of the machine, as well as some public domain books and articles on how to use the Braille 'n Speak. The programs Send and Rcv are also included, making it easy to transfer text between the Scholar and your PC.
The Scholar costs $1,050 and is available for purchase with Quota funds. If you are looking for a notetaker, be sure to check out the Braille 'n Speak Scholar.
APH Technology Update (ISSN 1081-518x) is published by the American Printing House for the Blind / PO box 6085 / Louisville, KY 40206-0085.
Editor - Larry Skutchan
Copy Editors - Scott Blome, Kris Scott
Contributing Writers - Keith Creasy, Mario Eiland, John Hedges, Rob
Meredith, Larry Skutchan, Rodger Smith
Design and Layout - Rosie Felfle, Scott Blome
Photography - Rosie Felfle, Scott Blome
Original Illustrations - Rosie Felfle
APH Technology Update (ISSN 1081-518x) - is provided by the American Printing House for the Blind (APH), Louisville, KY; however, the views expressed are strictly those of its authors and do not necessarily represent the findings, views, or endorsements of APH.
Copying articles from the APH Technology Update is permitted as long as appropriate credit is given to APH.
Please contact the APH technology group about other software or computer related materials you'd like to see from APH. We welcome your submissions. Send articles, press releases, or announcements to:
Editor / APH Technology Update / Department of Educational Research / American Printing House for the Blind, Inc. / PO Box 6085 / Louisville, KY 40206-0085.