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APH is putting a new emphasis on technology. One prong of the emphasis is new, talking educational software.
While APH has produced talking software in the past, it's been a few years since new programs have been released. During these years, several new technologies have emerged to permit more interesting programs that are easier for students and teachers to use.
In the past, APH's talking educational software required a speech synthesizer and a screen access program or a screen enlargement program. Unfortunately, many teachers, especially in some of the rural areas of the country, have no idea such software exists. And, in many cases, students are too young to be expected to master such complex programs. In any case, the commercially available educational software does not work well with current screen access technology. While commercial publishing companies should make their software accessible, understanding what the blind or visually impaired child needs is complex. Commercial publishing companies lack the expertise required to make accessibility a reality--probably for several years to come.
APH recognizes there is a tremendous need for high quality software that blind and visually impaired children can use independently. We have begun a program to produce self-voicing, large print educational software. Instead of relying on a dedicated speech synthesizer, the software uses either digitized recordings or synthesized speech along with large-sized fonts. When it is practical, digitized recordings use APH's professional narrators to bring a clear, easily understood voice to our software. Listening to Windows® 95®, Learn keys®, and Math Flash® are three examples of programs that use digitized speech. As you probably know, digitized speech is actually a recording of a human that has been digitized and stored on CD-ROM ready for playback at the appropriate places in the program. A major advantage of digitized speech is that someone just beginning to use a computer can easily understand it. The disadvantage of using digitized recordings, of course, is that the program must know ahead of time every phrase that will be used. Listening to Windows 95, Learn Keys and Math Flash fit into this category.
Listening to Windows 95 is a tutorial that explains key concepts for use of Windows 95 and Windows 98. It emphasizes techniques that blind users need to know in order to use the Windows operating environment. Listening to Windows can be used with or without your access equipment, although to follow the exercises, you do need to have your access equipment running.
Listening to Windows 95 contains several units. They include:
Each of the units presents a series of lessons that take you step-by-step through the topics discussed. Also, many of the lessons include a quiz. Listening to Windows 95 is interesting and unique. The program runs in the background, so you can actually participate in the suggested exercises in a real situation. For example, if one of the lessons tells you to open the Start Menu, you can actually open the Start Menu and explore its contents before going on to the next section of the tutorial. This lets you see what is on the Start Menu on your computer which, of course, can vary from one computer to another.
You control Listening to Windows by using function keys F6 through F12. This keeps the program from conflicting with other Windows programs that commonly use the keys F1 through F5. Listening to Windows gives clear instructions about how to proceed with the next section of the tutorial. It will say, for example, "Open the Start Menu by holding down the Control key while you press Escape. Press F12 to continue." This lets you know you can explore the contents of the Start Menu and then simply press F12 to proceed. The Start Menu will remain open and ready for more exploration and study. Of course, you can also use F11 to repeat the current instruction or F10 to backup to the previous instruction.
In addition to moving from section to section, Listening to Windows 95 provides keyboard commands to fast-forward or rewind the material. You can also press a key to go directly back to the main menu.
Listening to Windows 95 is currently available. Its catalog number is D-64550-00, and it costs $150.
Another program that employs digitized speech is Learn Keys. It provides keyboard feedback so you can explore the keyboard without the fear of accidentally accessing special menus or modes. Normally, when you press the Alt key the program you are using goes to its System Menu. Similarly, pressing the Windows key opens the Start Menu. When Learn Keys is running, these keys and any other key on the keyboard speaks what the key is. This means new users, who may not be familiar with the keyboard or with a special keyboard layout, have a perfect environment for exploring the keyboard. The Devorak layout, for example, is a keyboard layout that may work for a user; but, without knowing what the new layout is, it would be difficult to take advantage of. Learn keys is also useful when you want to find out the unusual layout of a notebook computer.
For more details, see John's article about Learn Keys in this issue.
The third educational software package that employs digitized speech is Math Flash. This program lets the parent or teacher set several parameters that control what type of math problems are presented and how difficult those problems are. You can set the size of both numbers involved in a problem, which operations you want to practice, the amount of time the program waits for an answer, and more. Math Flash lets you choose either drill or practice. It can also be set to work as a test. In the test mode, correct answers are not given and a graded version of the test is printed at the end.
Math Flash has not yet been released. At the time of this writing, the program is undergoing field testing. Check for price and availability late in 1999.
In addition to Listening to Windows 95, Learn Keys, and Math Flash, which all use digitized speech, several other programs that use synthesized speech are also in development. The first of these that will be released is Talking Typer for Windows®. Like its popular predecessor, PC Typer® for DOS, Talking Typer for Windows lets the parent or teacher set up lessons for learning the keyboard. The program comes with several pre-configured lessons, and you can edit or add as many new lessons as you wish. Again, Talking Typer for Windows does not require you to have a speech synthesizer or a screen access program. It is, in other words, completely self-contained. All you need is a CD-ROM drive and a sound card.
Talking Typer ships with the Microsoft® text-to-speech engine, and supports any other Microsoft Speech Application Interface (MSAPI) compliant text-to-speech engine you may have. Talking Typer is the first program to use the APH Speech Environment (ASE). ASE is a wrapper around the SAPI compliant engines to provide a functional, common interface for all the new APH software.
Talking Typer for Windows features several functions that you, the users, have suggested over the past few years since the last release of PC Typer for DOS. In addition to easier assignment of lessons, the teacher or parent can make recordings of dictations so the student can independently work on open typing. While listening to the recording, the student can rewind, pause, and fast forward the recorded dictation. One feature high on your request list is the ability to include special computer keys into the lessons. Talking typer for Windows does that, too.
Talking Typer for Windows is scheduled for release early in 2000.
Two more programs are scheduled for release within the next year. They are Teacher's Pet® and Talking Puzzles®. Teacher's Pet, like its older Apple® cousin, lets the teacher or parent construct quizzes and lets the computer play them back to the child. Talking Puzzles is a program that generates hidden word and crossword puzzles.
APH has begun its new emphasis on technology by producing programs that are general enough to be useful for a wide range of blind and visually impaired users. Next, we'll focus on more specialized programs.
If you have ideas about programs you'd like to see--that is, programs that aren't already available--or if you're interesting in beta testing new APH software, please drop a line to technology@aph.org. If you are interested in beta testing, please include information about how you use the computer, your experience, and if you are a teacher that will use the program with students. If you are a teacher, it would also be useful to get information about the kinds of students you teach. Please include their age ranges, your school setting, and the amount of computer experience your students have.
This issue is packed full of information and extras. We are shifting our primary focus to production of this newsletter as a Web-based publication. That way, we can give you some extra goodies, like sound samples, as you'll find in two of the articles in this issue.
In addition to sounds and images we can provide on the Web edition, this issue of the newsletter features a free program that you can download and run on your own system. It lets your PC serve as a talking clock. While we can't promise you a free new program every issue, this is the kind of thing we want to be able to do.
We still offer the print, braille, disk and cassette versions of the APH Technology Update, but the disk version contains only the text of the articles; there is no room on the disk to include pictures, sound samples, or extra programs. Likewise, you cassette users will get the sounds, but none of the rest of the new extras.
We are trying to reduce the number of print copies of this newsletter that we send out. If you want to take advantage of the Web-based edition and drop the print edition, please drop Artina Paris a line and let her know you'll be getting your future APH Technology Updates from the APH Web site at www.aph.org.
You can call her at 800-223-1839. Press 4 when the phone answers. or
drop her a line at:
Artina Paris
American Printing House for the Blind
PO Box 6085
Louisville, KY 40206
You can also e-mail Artina at aparis@aph.org.
We have used every effort to code the content of the Web edition of this newsletter in such a way as to make it both accessible and easy to read. The entire newsletter is, for example, in one file, so you speech users can tell your screen reader to read the entire document without having to wade from link to link on every article. Likewise, this design makes it easy to get a braille translation or to print the entire newsletter with as little fuss as possible. There are no specific font or size instructions in the content, so you should get this material formatted and presented as you have selected with your style sheets.
by Keith Creasy
During the last decade or so computer electronic mail has grown from the obscure to the pervasive. I recall doing some e-mail back in the mid-1980s as a subscriber to CompuServe®, a popular computer information service. At that time CompuServe had something like 200,000 users worldwide and grew to about 500,000 within a few years. Even so, e-mail was often not a very practical way to communicate because so few of the people I wanted to communicate with used it. Additionally, the various bulletin board systems and information services people used did not exchange e-mail. That meant I could write e-mail to other CompuServe subscribers, but if I had a friend who subscribed to GENIE®, another popular information service, I was out of luck.
All that changed in the early '90s, when the Internet became publicly available and caught the attention of millions of computer users. There were other networks that allowed for the exchange of messages and mail, such as "FidoNet," but none of them ever caught the attention of the mainstream computer users.
Now, with the Internet, the World Wide Web, and e-mail having become household words, my children are exchanging e-mail addresses instead of phone numbers. I sometimes find myself in meetings in which almost everyone there has Internet e-mail. Even the "private" computer information services and bulletin board systems (bbs) have felt the pressure and now allow their users to send and receive Internet e-mail.
The proliferation of the Internet isn't the only thing that has caused e-mail to catch fire with mainstream computer users. Thanks to Microsoft and a handful of other companies, e-mail can now include much more than just text. It can include graphics and sound. You can send your friends everything from cartoons and photos to voice messages and music. My own mother-in-law, for example, wasn't that interested in e-mail until she found out my wife could send her photos of our children. Now she spends hours exchanging e-mail and browsing Web sites. A mere year or two ago she would have laughed at the very thought of her sitting at a computer keyboard.
Chances are you're already "online" and have the ability to send and receive e-mail. If so, this article may not be as informative for you as it is for those who are just starting out or haven't even begun to use e-mail. In future articles I will try to get into more detail about ways you can make your e-mail work better for you and ways you can handle more mail easily and conveniently. For now, I want to provide a good foundation by making sure you understand the basics of e-mail: how to get connected and how to send and receive messages on your computer.
Obviously, to send and receive computer e-mail you will need access to a computer. It can be just about any computer, from an old Apple II® to the newest, fastest machines running Windows 98 or the Macintosh® OS.
You will also need a "connection" to the Internet. I'll talk more about this later, but for most it means having a telephone line near the computer and a "modem" to allow you to connect the computer to the phone line.
Finally, you will need some software for your computer that will allow it to dial a number, connect to a "server," and gather e-mail you can read and respond to. Some of the most popular e-mail programs, or "clients," include Eudora®, Microsoft's Internet Mail® and Outlook Express®, and Netscape Navigator®. There are many others. One called "Pine®" is, I believe, the most speech-friendly of them all.
If you are a speech user, you will also need some kind of screen reader like ASAP®, JAWS®, WindowEyes®, or any of the other popular screen-reading programs. If you are going to use an e-mail client that runs under Windows, obviously you need a Windows screen reader such as JFW®, ASAW®, or WindowEyes®.
Because there are a wide variety of computers, modems, and software, let's start with what I believe is the most common configuration (combination of hardware and software) in use today.
If you go out and shop for a computer, you are most likely going to find a variety of machines all with Windows 98 already installed. Macintosh computers are the exception, but they are still among a small minority in spite of the fact that they are excellent machines. Your Windows 98 machine will most likely have a modem already installed. Make sure it does. Windows 98 also includes software for accessing the Internet, viewing Web sites, and exchanging e-mail. The Internet has become so pervasive that computer manufacturers and dealers assume they will be used to connect to the Internet, and Microsoft is quickly making it a part of their operating systems.
With your new computer, you have all the components of software and hardware you need. The only two additional requirements are: a phone line (almost everyone has one of those) and an account with an Internet Service Provider (ISP) or some other similar service that will let you exchange e-mail. I recommend you find a good ISP and purchase an account for about $20 per month. You will find a few online services listed in your computer already, making it fairly easy to connect to them. There are a variety of others too, so you may want to check the yellow pages or find out what service your friends and associates use.
Outlook Express is the e-mail client that comes with Microsoft's Internet Explorer®. Let's take a look at Outlook Express and how it is used--not because it is necessarily the best, but because it is probably the most commonly used software for handling Internet e-mail. We will explore some other e-mail clients as we go along. If you have comments or preferences as to which clients you'd like to know more about, feel free to write me at the e-mail address below, or contact me at the American Printing House for the Blind.
We're going to get really basic here, so all you e-mail and Internet veterans will just have to bear with me . . . or, you can move on to one of John or Rob's articles.
When you establish an account with an Internet Service Provider (ISP), or some other Internet connected computer information service, you will almost always get an e-mail address as a part of your account package. My ISP, for example, is Iglou Internet Services® (which serves the cities of Louisville, Lexington, Cincinnati, and Nashville). My reason for choosing Iglou as my ISP has to do with having local access in the places I need most. I've been a customer of theirs since 1992. I like their customer service, and they offer access to a "shell" account, which is something I'll be talking about more in the future.
There are a lot of ISPs out there, and you will find reasons for picking a particular one as I did. Many ISPs offer not just one e-mail address per account but several. Iglou gives you two. Some will give you more addresses, so each person in your family can have a separate e-mail address, or you can have one for your personal e-mail and one for your business or professional mail. How you use your e-mail "mailboxes" is up to you.
In order to use your Iglou account with Outlook Express you have to "tell" Outlook Express several things about your account.
The first thing you will be asked is what name you want to go by. This item is pretty easy to fill out because you can just put in your name or a nickname you want those you exchange mail with to recognize you by. Outlook Express doesn't care what you put here, but it will send that name out with your e-mail. So, if you don't want to advertise your real or last name, then don't use them.
Once you have put in your name and selected "next" you will be asked for your e-mail address. You will get this information from your ISP. In my case, I know that my e-mail addresses at Iglou are my User ID, an "@" sign, and the "domain" of Iglou which is "iglou.com." This is the way most e-mail addresses are put together. My e-mail address ends up being keith@iglou.com.
After you have entered your e-mail address, you will be asked for the login name and password for your account. What is needed here is the login name and password for e-mail. It might be the same as for your ISP account, or it might be different. So, if you are in doubt, you can ask your ISP. Once you have entered this, you can select "next" again.
The next screen asks for the kind of "servers" you are connected to and their "domain" names. You can get this information from your ISP, but just as an example I'll use Iglou's. For incoming mail I am using a "POP3" server. Most ISPs and service providers use POP3 servers. The name I have to enter is "mail.iglou.com." I could also use "pop3.iglou.com," and that would work too. For outgoing mail you have to enter the "smtp" server's name. For Iglou, it is "mail.iglou.com" or "smtp.iglou.com." You can select "next" to go on to the next step.
Finally, you will be asked what kind of connection you will use. For most of us it will be "I will use my modem to connect to the Internet." You also will have to select the connection to use. You may only have one connection defined called "my connection." If so, then pick that one. If you have more than one connection, choose the one for the ISP where your e-mail account is. In my case I chose "Iglou" because that's what my connection to Iglou was called when it was set up.
At this point you can just select "finish" and you are done with setting Outlook Express to handle your mail. Outlook Express will do lots of fancy things like let you handle messages for more than one account, but we won't get into that yet.
The main screen for Outlook Express has several choices on it. To handle e-mail, all you need to do is press the tab key until you hear "Read E-mail." Then, press the Enter or Return key.
The e-mail screen in Outlook Express has three "child" windows, smaller windows within the main one. You can use the Tab key or the Shift-Tab key to move from one child window to another. They are, from top to bottom: (1) a list of messages in the currently selected mail folder, (2) a window showing part of the currently selected message, and (3) a list of the mail folders into which your e-mail messages are filed.
These child windows are dynamic. As the selection in one window changes, the other child windows will change accordingly. For example, if you move the selection from one message in the message list to another, the text in the second child window will change to show the text of the newly selected message. Also, if you tab to the list of folders and move that selection from one folder to another, the list of messages as well as the message text will change. I'll explain these three child windows in more detail.
The first window shows a list of messages in the current folder. You can navigate using the arrow keys, Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down. If you are using JFW or some other screen reader, as you move from one message to another and select a message, you should hear the message you move to spoken. If not, your screen reader may need some adjusting to work well with Outlook Express. As you move from message to message in the list, the text in the next child window will change to show the first part of each message you select.
If you want to take a closer look at the text of the selected message, just press the Tab key. Your cursor will move to the second child window where you can view or listen to the message text. The window is small. Only a few lines will show at a time, but you can use Page Up and Page Down to move through the text one window at a time. By default you will probably be looking at messages in the "inbox" folder.
There are other folders in Outlook Express when you first start using it, and you can add more of your own. If you are in the message text child window you can get to the folder list by pressing the Tab key again. The folder list is a bit like the message list. You can move up and down with the cursor keys to browse through the folders. When you find or hear one you want to check, just stop on that folder and press the Tab key again to put the cursor on the first child window, the list of messages. The list will have changed to show messages in the folder you selected. We'll do more with folders in the future, but for now just keep the "inbox" folder selected because that's what you will be working with.
So far you have Outlook Express up and working, and you've seen any messages that were already in your inbox. There are only two more things I will cover in this article: (1) getting messages from your ISPs server and (2) sending new messages. First, you can create a new message by pressing "Ctrl-n" from Outlook Express. The screen will change to one that has several fields to fill out, depending on who you want to send the message to and what the subject is. The first field is the "TO" field. If you wanted to send e-mail to me you would need to type my e-mail address, keith@iglou.com, in this field.
Once you've entered the address press the Tab key to move to the next field. The next field is "CC." If you want to send a copy of this message to anyone else, you can put other e-mail addresses here. I'd recommend you leave it blank for now.
Pressing the Tab key again puts you on the "Subject" field. Here you can type a few short words telling what the message is about.
Press the Tab key again, and you will be ready to type your message in the edit box. It works much like a word processor without all the fancy features. Just write and edit your message until you are satisfied with it.
Once you've written your message, press "Alt-S" to send it. If your Outlook Express is set to send messages immediately, you will hear that your system is connecting to your ISP. If not, you will just be put back on the main screen, the one with the three child windows on it.
If you just want to receive your mail and send any unsent messages, you simply press the "Ctrl-M" keys. This will cause Outlook Express to connect to your ISP and retrieve any of your mail on the ISP's POP3 server. It will also send any mail that is still in your "Outbox" folder waiting to be sent. This may take anywhere from a few seconds to minutes, depending on whether you have a lot of mail or a slow connection. Once your mail is sent and retrieved, you will be back on the Outlook Express e-mail screen with a list of your new messages.
That's enough for now. I will continue next time with more details, an explanation of some other e-mail clients, and how those clients might differ from Outlook Express. In the meantime, happy e-mailing.
If you're using recordings as your reading medium, and you have a lot of information to read, you're probably looking for a way to read faster. Of course, many 4-track tape players offer an essential speed control to let you adjust the playback speed of your recording. The problem is you can only increase the speed to a certain point before the pitch of the recording raises to an unpleasant and difficult-to-understand level. You've probably thought of this odd effect as the Donald Duck® voice.
For a long time, APH has been interested in reducing the effects of speed on pitch. Looking back from the late '90s to the first APH device, we can see that advances have been made to help listeners be able to tolerate faster playback speeds. The earliest efforts seem a little quaint, but they were the first steps. Advancement has continued from the Handi-Cassette® to our newest product: Speech Expressor®.
The first device APH introduced to restore pitch to recordings played back at fast speed was a big metal box that had the odd side effect of introducing a periodic hum in the output. Still, this hum was a lot less objectionable than the pitch distortion caused by the speed change. This device helped a lot of people get through reading material for their job, study, or pleasure.
Late in the '80s, APH introduced the next generation of pitch restoration devices as part of the Handi-Cassette. By the way, this cassette is still available today in its third generation, the Handi-Cassette II, Updated. The Handi-Cassette's pitch restoration was superior to the metal box. The first two versions of Handi-Cassette used a technology called VSC, which is a licensed technology created by a Japanese firm. This restoration technique eliminates the odd motor noise of the first generation and has been the benchmark in pitch restoration technology. The new Handi-Cassette II, Updated and the Speech Expressor both use a new generation of digital pitch restoration.
Just in case you don't know, the Handi-Cassette is still an excellent bargain. You can also use it to restore the pitch from sources other than the Handi-Cassette itself. For example, think of the times you've wanted to listen to flexible disks at a faster rate but just couldn't stand the effects on the narrator's voice. It's a simple matter to patch the earphone jack of the talking book machine to the input jack of the Handi-Cassette and use its VSC pitch restoration to get a pleasant and understandable playback at speeds as high as twice the recording speed.
Now, with the introduction of the Speech Expressor®, it's possible to understand recordings played back at nearly three times their original speed. The Speech Expressor introduces a new generation of digital pitch restoration technology. Tone and brightness controls also improve playback.
If you are reading the electronic version of this article, click on the links below to hear a demonstration of Speech Expressor. The recorded version of this article includes the demonstration at the end of this paragraph. If you are listening to this article on tape, before you listen to the following demonstration, return your tape player's speed to normal speed for best results. Parts of the demonstration recording will already be at a higher speed.
This is a sample of the passage we'll be using for comparison purposes.
This is a sample of the passage played at three times normal speed with no compression.
For comparison, listen to this sample played at double speed and compressed with the original compression unit available in the early '80s. Notice the motor sounding noise apparent when the compression is active.
Here is the sample played at three times normal speed and compressed with the old, original unit.
This is the sample played at double speed and compressed with the original Handi-Cassette.
This is the Handi-Cassette II playing the sample at double speed with its improved compression.
Speech Expressor is a stand-alone pitch restoration unit. It's designed to be used with an existing tape player or National Library Service (NLS) talking book machine. The unit measures 3.5 by 6 inches and is powered from either AC power with an included wall transformer or four AA NI-CAD batteries that are also included. Speech Expressor comes with a patch chord to plug from your tape player's earphone or output jack to the Expressor's input jack. There are also instructions on cassette, so you can begin using the device immediately.
Before I say anything else about Speech Expressor, let me point out a little detail about this unit's design that shows how APH gives attention to the needs of our customers. That little detail is a raised dot at the positive end of the battery cavity to indicate the proper position of the batteries. It isn't a big deal, but it is helpful.
Speech Expressor is a flat box with a speaker on its face and side control knobs for volume, tone, brightness, and restoration. The volume knob also serves as the on-off switch. The back of the unit contains the AC adapter input and two jacks: the input jack and an output jack used to send sound from the Speech Expressor to another device such as a tape recorder or amplifier. When you turn the restoration knob to its notched position, Speech Expressor acts only as a simple amplifier and modifies the signal with settings from the tone and brightness knobs.
I've found that I leave the Speech Expressor connected to my tape player all the time. When I start a new tape, I shut off Speech Expressor's restoration. Then I adjust the tape's speed on the tape player. Next, I turn Speech Expressor's restoration knob clockwise until the pitch is restored to an acceptable value. At this point, you can fine tune the tape player's speed control and the pitch restoration control on Speech Expressor until you get the sound you want.
Another interesting feature of Speech Expressor is its ability to restore the pitch of tapes played back at speeds slower than their original recorded speed. You can use this feature when you find it difficult to understand parts of a recording and need a slower playback. Simply turn Speech Expressor's pitch restoration control counter-clockwise until you get a pitch level that will help you understand the difficult part of a recording.
Speech Expressor, catalog number 1-07050, costs $125 and is available now from APH.
by Rob Meredith
If your computer is relatively new, and you use speech output with Windows 95 or Windows 98, you are probably using your sound card as a synthesizer. If so, you may be a little less than enthused about your software speech synthesizer tying up your sound card most of the time, preventing you from listening to Real Audio®, sound effects, and the like.
An exciting new innovation in sound cards has recently occurred. This is the ability to play more than one wave audio stream at a time. With one of these new sound cards, you can use Windows sounds, use your screen reader, listen to Real Audio, and play your favorite wave files all at the same time without missing anything. This exciting new innovation was brought on by the PC gaming industry. Gamers like to have many sounds coming from all around them in a 3D space. So, sound card designers responded, and we all benefited.
APH has evaluated two of these new sound cards, the Turtle Beach® Montego® A3DXstream, (referred to as the Montego in this article), and the Creative Labs® Sound Blaster Live!®, (referred to as the SB Live! in this article.)
The Montego costs around $70, while the SB Live! costs around $200. If the higher price of the SB Live! bothers you, perhaps you will like the price of the Sound Blaster Live! Value card, a card similar to the SB Live! but with a few less features, which is around $100. (Unless otherwise noted, references to the SB Live! in this article apply to the SB Live! Value as well.) Note that APH has not tested the Montego II, the second generation of the Montego card.
In short, the Montego and the SB Live! performed quite well, especially in the area of multiple wave stream support. While the SB Live! can handle 32 wave audio streams at once, and the Montego can handle 48, it is doubtful that you will need anything close to this, unless you are playing 3D games. Four active streams at once during general use should be more than adequate in most situations.
Let's consider the system requirements of each card, followed by some of the more interesting features they offer.
The first thing you will notice is that the SB Live! requires a much more powerful and newer system than does the Montego. This is probably the most important purchasing factor involving the two cards, aside from the price. If you have an older machine and you need this type of sound card, the Montego is probably for you. If you are interested in the SB Live!, check the reference manual for your motherboard to be sure that it has PCI 2.1 (or higher) compliant slots. This would be easy to overlook, and could prevent the card from working for you.
The Montego and the SB Live! are two very different cards. In short, this is rooted in the fact that they use different chipsets, and different ways of enhancing games. The Montego uses the Aureal Vortex chipset to achieve 3D positional effects. This chipset can also be found on other sound cards. The SB Live! uses the programmable E-MU 10K1 chip, and a system of enhancing sound developed by Creative Labs called Environmental Audio. In any case, both cards mix wave audio on the card, so you don't have to worry about your computer wasting time mixing audio streams.
Both cards have a stereo output jack, a stereo line input jack, and a monaural microphone input jack. The stereo output jack on each card can be used to drive a pair of amplified speakers or a pair of headphones. Neither card can drive unamplified speakers. The SB Live! has an additional output jack for supporting two rear speakers in a four-speaker configuration, such as in a home theater system.
The SB Live! also comes with an additional card called the Audio Extension card. This card offers SPDIF (Sony®/Phillips® Digital Interface) input and output, as well as dedicated MIDI I/O ports, and a digital speaker output (for future expansion). The Audio Extension card does not have to be connected for the SB Live! to function. The SB Live! Value does not include, and cannot support, the Audio Extension card. Most users do not need the Audio Extension card, and would be happy with the SB Live! Value. If you do buy an SB Live! Value and find you need digital I/O later, you can purchase a digital I/O card from a third party vender.
Unless you are using software designed to take advantage of the chipset on the Montego, such as 3D games, the card really doesn't offer any advantage over most fairly new sound cards, with the exception of multiple wave output. It does have a wavetable MIDI synthesizer, which is much better than an old FM synthesis-based MIDI synthesizer, but it really isn't that great compared to some other wavetable synthesizers.
The SB Live!, on the other hand, offers a ton of features which might interest a variety of people. Not just game-related features, but features which can benefit sound hobbyists and musicians.
Environmental Audio is a system of adding real-time processing to sound to make it sound Live! While a lot of Environmental Audio is geared toward games, you can use it for any audio purpose. For example, you could add reverberation to your voice, or add distortion to your electric guitar, all in real-time. You could even use the SB Live! to pitch-shift a signal from your cassette recorder, allowing you to play the tape up to twice as fast, but hear the recording at its normal pitch. This gives you functionality similar to the APH Speech Expressor, though the Speech Expressor is more flexible for this application.
The online and cassette editions of this newsletter contain an example of the same passage used in Larry's Speech Expressor article with the sample played at double speed and pitch shifted through the SB Live!.
While environmental audio supports four speaker home theater systems, you can use it with two speakers or with head phones. You can customize your audio environment by selecting from the following Environmental Audio effects:
The Reverb and Chorus effects are always available by default, and you can add two more of the others at one time to create the environment you want. (Note that after choosing one additional effect, the choices are limited for the second additional effect.) It is also possible to play one effect into another. For example, you could route the distortion effect through the reverb effect.
Both the SB Live! and the Montego offer a 64-voice wavetable MIDI synthesizer. This means that music played through MIDI mostly uses samples of real instruments to generate sound. The Montego uses a 4 megabyte wavetable of samples, which is configured as a General MIDI (GM) patch set. The SB Live! offers a two, four, and eight megabyte GM wavetable in SoundFont format. While I wasn't extremely impressed with either the four megabyte wavetable synthesizer on the Montego, or the eight megabyte wavetable SoundFont on the SB Live!, I did like the sound of the SB Live MIDI synthesizer much better.
While the SB Live! offers 64 hardware voices, the Montego offers 32 hardware voices and 32 software voices. Software voices take more computing power. This may explain why the Montego did not perform well when playing complex MIDI files in 64 voice mode, even though the two test systems we used far exceeded the system requirements of the Montego (performance was improved by downloading and installing the latest Montego drivers).
Along with the 64 hardware MIDI voices of the SB Live!, the card also offers an additional software MIDI synthesizer which supports 448 voices. This synthesizer is based on the Ensoniq® Audio PCI synthesizer, and uses a two MB wavetable by default. Unfortunately, this synthesizer is not really interesting, mainly because it does not use SoundFont technology, and defaults to always using chorus and reverb, no matter how you configure the Environmental Audio settings. Until this synthesizer is improved, it really isn't worth using.
Unlike most sound cards from other manufacturers, the SB Live uses SoundFonts to store the wavetables it uses. Most sound cards use a proprietary file format for wavetables, which makes them work only with the wavetables that come with them. SoundFont technology uses a special wavetable format which is an open specification. This means that not only can you use wavetables from Creative Labs and E-MU Systems, but you can purchase SoundFonts from other companies, or obtain them for free on the World Wide Web. The SB Live! certainly isn't the only sound card which supports user replaceable and editable wavetables, but it is probably the most popular one to do so.
If you are a musician, you can even create your own SoundFonts, just as you would create patches with a digital sampling keyboard. To create your own SoundFonts or edit existing ones, you will need to download a program called Vienna SoundFont Studio®, available at the SB Live! Web site.
SoundFont technology has been around for a long time in Creative Labs sound cards. But, to use SoundFonts on older sound cards, you had to buy memory chips and add them to the sound card yourself. This made it inconvenient and expensive to use SoundFonts effectively.
The SB Live uses the memory in your computer for SoundFont storage. You can use up to 32 MB of memory for SoundFonts, making it possible to use rather large wavetables. Because most newer computers have plenty of memory, and because the SB Live! can use it, many companies have begun developing SoundFonts and selling them on the Web. The SB Live also comes with several additional SoundFonts, besides the GM sets, which concentrate on a specific instrument or family of instruments. Generally, as with all digital sampling, the larger the SoundFont, the better the sound.
Both the SB Live! and the Montego come with a lot of software. The software bundled with the SB Live! seems the most useful, as you get such titles as Cakewalk Express Gold®, a MIDI sequencer, and Sound Forge XP® 4.0, a digital audio editor. (Note that these two programs are not included with the SB Live! Value.) You also get a variety of MIDI files and SoundFonts, as well as a 3D game called Unreal Special Edition®, software for organizing your multimedia files, and more.
The Montego features Audio Station 2® by Voyetra Technology®, a suite of applications which allows you to play MIDI files, record wave files, and play music CDs. It also includes MIDI Orchestrator Plus®, a program which enables you to edit and create MIDI files. The Montego also includes Battle Zone®, a 3D game. Unfortunately, the software bundled with the Montego requires that a key be entered for installation to proceed, very annoying if you can't read the key number yourself!
In general, most of the utility software bundled with these sound cards is usable with a screen reader, though the interfaces used could stand a lot of improvement. Obviously the 3D electronic games are probably not very accessible; I didn't even try them. Screen reader users will also not be able to use the Creative Sound Graph®. The Creative Keyboard®, an on-screen MIDI keyboard, does have some keyboard control however, and could be used in a pinch. For volume control and mixing adjustments, it is much better to use the Windows Volume Control program rather than the mixers that come with each sound card, as the bundled mixer utilities do not offer keyboard commands.
Most of the software in Audio Station 2, bundled with the Montego, has some keyboard commands. Don't expect, however, to edit wave or MIDI files easily with a screen reader using this software.
The Control Panel program for configuring SoundFonts on the SB Live! is usable, but with some difficulty. When selecting an item in a list box, such as a SoundFont bank or instrument, focus is automatically changed to a different area of the dialog box. This is extremely annoying, but it can be dealt with. If you plan to use Vienna SoundFont Studio, beware! This program has virtually no keyboard support and a lot of windows. You will have to use the mouse controls of your screen reader most of the time to get any real editing done.
While this article focused on the SB Live! and the Montego, it is important to note that there are also other sound cards available which support multiple wave audio streams, and they are all priced competitively. The Monster Sound® M80 or the Monster Sound MX300, both from Diamond Multimedia systems®, are sound cards which use an Aureal chipset. These cards should work with multiple wave streams, though we haven't tried them.
You can also find multiple wave audio stream support on the sound cards built into some computers. Dell Computer®, for example, uses a Yamaha® DX-XG integrated sound system on some of its models. This integrated sound card offers limited multiple wave support. While I could not find any specifications, it appears that two or three streams is the limit on this particular sound card. It also appears that the streams are mixed by the sound card driver, resulting in slower performance than the SB Live! or the Montego offer. Nevertheless, this type of sound card may meet the needs of people using a software synthesizer. You can also get a Montego or an SB Live! Value with some Dell systems.
Both the SB Live! and the Montego offer a major advantage over older sound cards, multiple wave stream support, as well as other features. Either card is potentially a good choice, depending on your needs and budget. If you do purchase one of these cards, I suggest that you download and install the latest drivers available from the manufacturer after you get the card working. Installing the latest drivers is particularly important in the case of the SB Live!, because the drivers shipped with the card cause some software speech synthesizers to stutter when speech begins.
For more information on the Montego, or to download newer drivers for it, visit www.tbeach.com.
For more information on the SB Live! or the SB Live! Value, or for new drivers or other additions, visit www.sblive.com.
For information on the Diamond Multimedia Monster Sound products, go to www.diamondmm.com.
To reach the Dell Computer Web site, go to www.dell.com.
Since we released Listening to Windows 95, the interactive CD tutorial, one of the most frequent questions we get is, "Does it work with Windows 98, too?" This article begins a series of articles that spells out exactly what has changed about Windows between Windows 95 and Windows 98 and previews a few details about the new version of Windows 98.
Listening to Windows 95 does, indeed, work just fine with Windows 98. The differences between Windows 95 and Windows 98 are minimal, and there is a file on the Listening to Windows 95 disk that outlines some procedures you can use to help insure the tutorial and your system match.
This article assumes that your Windows 95 system uses Internet Explorer, version 4.01 or later. If you are using an earlier version of Internet Explorer, download the latest version at www.microsoft.com/ie. There is no charge for the update.
Once you're using IE 4.01 or later with Windows 95, it is very difficult to tell the difference between Windows 95 and windows 98. One of the chief differences between 95 and 98 actually comes from the installation of the active desktop that you get with Internet Explorer. The active desktop is Microsoft's way of helping integrate the Web onto your desktop. It lets you treat your desktop as if it were a Web page. You can create a HTML page to display and you can create and copy channels that keep parts of your desktop with the latest information of interest to you from the Web. The active desktop also lets you single click to start programs, just like you do when browsing the Web with Internet Explorer.
Having said that, let me point out that the active desktop isn't the most convenient way of using Windows with the keyboard as your primary method of input. Since this is how most speech users interact with the operating system, it is usually more effective to turn off the active desktop and use the classic interface for managing your PC sessions. The classic desktop lets you use the Tab key to cycle through three main parts of the Windows desktop area, the desktop, the start button, and the task bar.
If you use Windows 98, there are are also a couple more task bars like the address bar and the links bar, but you can turn these off if you don't want to use them. To me, they are in the way, because you can get the functionality they provide from other easily accessible places in the system without having to wade past them every time you use the desktop. Windows' 98 new feature of letting you press Windows+D to get right to the desktop helps make the situation a little simpler, but getting to the task bar, for example, still involves a series of keystrokes that just isn't necessary using the classic style.
The first thing you're going to want to do is turn off the active desktop that gets installed with IE 4.0 or later. To turn off the active desktop, get to your Start Menu with Ctrl+Escape then pick Settings from the menu. Uncheck Active Desktop from the Settings menu by arrowing down to it, then pressing Enter.
One of the next things you want to do for better keyboard accessibility is to turn off each folder's "Web View" setting. If you don't turn this view off, you will find yourself pressing Tab once every time you open a folder. To fix this problem, open any folder with the run command by typing in that folder's name. Next, you'll probably want to go to the View menu and check Details. Checking Details puts the items listed in one column, so you can use just the Up Arrow and Down Arrow to navigate.
If you have the Large Icons or Small Icons view enabled, you have to use the Left Arrow and right Arrow along with Up Arrow and Down Arrow to navigate through all the files in the list. Once you check Details, go back to the View Menu and uncheck Web View. Now, go back to the view menu once more and select Folder Options. This displays a dialog box with View as its second tab. Press Ctrl+Tab to get to that tab, then press Tab to get to the "Like Current Folder" button and press Space to activate it. You'll get a confirmation box to make sure you want to reset all your folders to these settings.
One of the best new features of Windows 98 over previous versions of windows is the new HTML based help system. Earlier versions of Windows use a program called Winhelp to display electronic documentation, but with the introduction of Windows 98, the help system became incredibly more flexible and easier to use with speech, too. You Web users will recognize that HTML stands for hyper text markup language and is the system used to code Web pages. This means the help system works just like browsing the Web, so it is much easier to find related topics and return to points earlier visited.
On the initial inspection, the help system looks the same as it did in Windows 95; you get the same contents screen that lets you expand and collapse branches of the structure of the electronic text.
The first version of the HTML help was very annoying when using it with the keyboard, because when you arrowed down to a subject then pressed Enter to open that material for viewing, the keyboard focus stayed on the contents area of the screen. This means that if there is more than a screen-full of text, you don't have a convenient way of scrolling down from the keyboard.
Normally, you'd press Page Down, but pressing Page Down at this point moves you down a page in the table of contents instead of the subject matter you just opened. In order to get the keyboard focus to the window that contains the text you want to scroll, you had to actually click the mouse in that window. With more recent versions of the help system, you can now press F6 to switch between the contents window and the subject window.
Many of the new features of Windows 98 Second Edition focus on the Web. This release introduces native support for faster modems like ADSL and cable modems. The connection to the Internet can also now be shared. That means that if you have your computers networked, you can use only one modem and account while several computers on the network independently browse the Web.
The new version also takes advantage of new hardware that is constantly improving. Second Edition makes it easy to add and remove PC accessories, thanks to improved support for United Serial Bus (USB) peripheral devices. Support for IEEE 1394 high bandwidth connections so you can easily connect digital cameras and new storage devices is also included. Windows 98 has direct support for the new instructions added to the Pentium III processor, so you should notice improvement in 3D and other video effects. Finally, the new version addresses some more Y2K issues.
As far as we have been able to determine, all the current versions of the screen readers and enlargement programs are compatible with Windows 98 Second Edition.
Look for more information and tips about what's new in Windows 98 in the next issue of APH Technology Update.
by John Hedges
The latest software product from APH is Learn Keys. This program runs on Windows 95 or later and allows inexperienced keyboard users, low vision users, and data entry workers to receive auditory feedback about what their fingers are doing on the keyboard. Learn Keys works on any keyboard layout, even on notebook systems. The software relies on professionally narrated key descriptions to announce each key as you press it, so the descriptions are fast and responsive. Several options are available for speed, pronunciation, voice, and font size. Let's look at these options.
In full screen mode, Learn Keys is "active"; it displays text of the keys being pressed in Verdana font. For low vision users, four different font sizes are available from the menu: normal, 14-point; medium, 22-point; large, 36-point; and extra large, 48-point. The menu is activated by pressing Alt + Space and speaks in the current voice. You can choose from two voices: Kerry, female, and Lou, male. You can also choose either normal or fast speed. In fast speed, speech is 50% faster than normal.
If you use speech, alternate pronunciations for keystrokes may be familiar. But if you are a new computer user or a student just starting out, key names--especially those that can serve as symbols--can be tricky. Learn Keys provides alternate pronunciation of several keys in different modes, which you can select from a menu. These modes or schemes include normal, terse, math, and full. Pronunciation schemes are useful. Full pronunciation speaks the key name. Math pronunciation speaks math symbols, and terse speaks short names. The variety of schemes allows you to hear which keys apply in a specific situation, whether you are working in a word-processing program or doing data entry in a spreadsheet.
You'll like the way Learn Keys operates in the background while other applications are running. You can switch to another application and still follow your keystrokes. This allows you to enter and verify a variety of data. If you are a blind user, you can operate the keyboard without a screen reader. Unlike Learn Keys menus, other program menus will not speak, only keystrokes typed in other programs will be spoken.
Of all the Learn Keys features, what you'll like best is the voice option. Each Learn Keys friendly, human voice is the perfect companion for exploring the keyboard to learn your way, as a supplement to a keyboard-training course, or for entering data all day long.
by Keith Creasy
I started in February of this year at the American Printing House as a programmer. I work with Larry Skutchan, Rob Meredith, and John Hedges to develop software applications that will become products or components of products produced and sold at APH.
I've been around, having worked for nine years as a technology instructor, programmer, and manager with the Kentucky Department for the Blind. I've also done a considerable amount of freelance work in and around Kentucky. The opportunity to work at APH and develop products as a part of Larry's team was something I just couldn't pass up. My specialty is using Microsoft's Visual C++® and the Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC®) to develop software programs that run under Windows 95, 98, 2000, and NT. My primary project at present is the anxiously awaited Talking Typer for Windows, something you will all be hearing more about in the coming months.
I enjoy programming, and sometimes like to just tinker as a way of exploring and learning more. One weekend I was doing just that when I decided to write a clock that would display the correctly formatted time on the screen. I knew I needed a timer for the Talking Typer, so this was a way to explore the best way of doing it. In an hour or so I had a nice little clock program. It wasn't good for much really because Windows already displays the time on the task bar. It was a good exercise though and I had the basis for my timer that I'd use in Talking Typer.
I think it was the next Monday when it hit me that we had some nice recorded words that we'd used for Learn Keys and Math Flash, two programs being developed by Rob and John. Almost all the words I'd need for a talking clock were already there. So, I decided to make my clock talk, announce the time every 15 minutes, and sound a nice chime. After a few more hours of work, I had it and the results weren't too bad. Still, the "AM" and "PM" made up of the separate words "A", "p", and "m" sounded a little choppy. I also didn't have words like "o'clock", "midnight" , and "noon". I made up a list of clock words and sent them to the studio where Lou Harpenau, who recorded the words for our other programs, did an excellent job of recording my new words. With my new words, extracted from the tape by Rob, I put together this completed version of the APH Talking Clock.
The talking clock is a very simple program, but I think it gives you an idea of the process that goes on when we develop software. It begins with an idea, either one of ours or one someone sends us, and then we work together to turn the idea into reality. I'm hoping that this simple program can be something that will begin an on-going dialog between the programming and technology team here at APH and our customers.
The Talking Clock is available for download in the electronic edition of the APH Technology Update. It's free and is a self-contained ".exe" file that you can copy to your desktop, or some other location if you desire, and run on your own computer. It does require that you be using Windows (95 or later) and that your computer is capable of playing sounds.
This software is not supported by APH. It is just a fun program written in spare time, so you can't get technical support on it, but it is simple enough that there should be no problems using it. APH cannot be responsible for any damages the program may cause, and you must agree to these terms before using the program.
If you're reading the electronic edition of this newsletter, Click here to download the Talking Clock. If you don't already have it, Get WinZip at www.winzip.com. You will need it to extract the clock program from this archive. If you're reading this article in print, think about changing to the electronic edition. In the meantime, though, you can point your browser to the APH Web site (www.aph.org/techup/9909) and download your own copy.
One of the things I hear over and over again is the need for games that blind and visually impaired children can play. So, I'm always on the lookout for accessible toys, puzzles, and games. Hey, its a tough job, but some one's got to do it.
I've found one of the "funnest" games to hit the streets in years: Bopit®. Not only does it encourage camaraderie and competition with its passing options and score-keeping abilities, but this game is one of the few I've seen on the general market that is completely accessible. Plus, it's affordable: Bopit costs around $20 and is available at nearly any store that carries toys.
Bopit is a large chunk of plastic that's roughly tubular and about a foot long. It has a twist handle at the top, a couple of pads to bop toward the middle (kind of like a drumhead), and a pull-tab at the bottom. This contraption yells commands at you, and you respond by either pulling, twisting, or bopping. Bopit is multi-colored, but it doesn't have high color contrast. It contains absolutely no visual interface, so a blind child has no disadvantage at all in playing the game.
The one thing Bopit doesn't have is accessible instructions. You can go a long way playing it without knowing all its features, but just for the record, here is how it works.
To start the game, give it a bop. Before bopping, though, you can pull to pick which kind of game to play. You can pull multiple times to select various methods for playing the game. What's so interesting and ultimately accessible about this thing is how each pull of the tab gives a different sound to indicate the kind of game you'll play. The sounds are a ratchet, a drum, and a whistle.
The ratchet sound goes rhaaaat and sounds like you got the wrong answer on a yesterday's game show. Bopping the unit after pulling to get the ratchet sound gives you a game that produces only sounds instead of voice commands to match. It gives a ratchet sound for twist, a drum for bop, and a whistle for pull. Give the tab another tug, and you'll get a whistle sound. Bopping it after the whistle sound gives you single-player mode with verbal commands. Another good pull on the thing gets you a drum sound. When in this mode, Bopit adds the "pass it" command to its other commands. When you hear, "pass it," you pass it to your neighbor. As many people as you want can play.
If you're reading the online edition of this article, you can hear a demo here.
Bopit reminds me a lot of the old Simon® game where there where four squares on the corners of a board and each square made a different sound. Simon plays a note, and you have to match it with one of the corners of the board that produces that sound. Simon then plays that sound and adds another. You hit the corners of the board for both the first and second sound. Simon then gives you another note, and you have to match all the notes again. This continues until you miss a note.
Instead of hitting corners of a square board to match what the game tells you to do, Bopit gives you some physical exercise. Bopit says, "twist it," and you grab the top of the contraption and give it a good quick twist. Then the thing might say, "bop it," and you have to give one of the drum pads a good healthy bop. Next it might say, "twist it," or "pull it," and you grab that part of this confabulation of plastic and do what you can to follow its crazy instructions.
Of course, each time you follow one of its demands for a pull, twist, or bop, the pace gets just a little faster! Pretty soon you're pulling, bopping, and twisting to a nightmare pace. Don't even try it if someone is talking to you: serious concentration is needed for playing with this little devil. Two of my friends just about got into a shouting match over whether the other, who was not taking a turn, was just plain talking or yelling! I find myself telling people to shush while I try to rack up points! It is, in short, addictive.
When you finally miss a command or are just too slow to keep up the pace, Bopit yells in agony and makes a series of sounds. These sounds are your score. A whistle stands for a hundred points, the ratchet is for ten, and the drum sound is for one point. Bopit gives your score right after it yells its pangs of agony over your missing the pattern. But, you and your friends and family are so noisy yelling your own pangs you can easily miss your score. Whoever designed this thing had the blind person in mind when she came up with this jewel, because it comes with its very own review mode! Yes, just give the bugger a twist, and it repeats your score. My daughter and I have begun communicating with a twist to show high score!
Bopit has gone wild. There are people holding Bopit competitions all over the country, and you hear about it in the news, from friends and from coworkers. I asked my wife to see if she could find a Bopit at Toys R Us, ® and my daughter said, "You mean one of those cool things you twist and bop," hitting her leg as she pantomimed playing the silly thing. It seems everyone but me had already heard about Bopit.
With serious Bopit players, everyone has his own opinion of proper hand and bop techniques. There are the sitters, the palmers, and the leggers. You won't catch the sitters in any position other than in a chair, with Bopit positioned horizontally in readiness for a quick bop with the knee or upper thigh. The palmers, on the other hand, hold Bopit vertically with one hand covering both the twist and bop (with the fingers for the twist and the palm for the bop). The other hand goes to the bottom and handles all the pulling requirements of the game. The leggers are probably the more showy of this bunch. They stand and slap their thigh for the bops. While everyone is pretty passionate about the specific Bopit technique they use, it's hard to make a convincing case about the merits of your technique unless you're top dog on the score!
It's refreshing to see a game that doesn't exclude the blind or visually impaired child (or adult), and Bopit is one game you'll surely want to try.
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, Jimmie Jackson
Contributing Writers - Keith Creasy, John Hedges, Rob Meredith, Larry Skutchan
Design and Layout - Chip Dumstorf, Lisa Thurston, Jan Urey
Photography - Scott Blome, Lisa Thurston
Original Illustrations - Scott Blome, Lisa Thurston
APH Technology Update (ISSN 1081-518x) - formally AccessAbilities - 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.