Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Keyboard Shortcuts, Woohoo!

Any readers that are old enough to remember the mouse as a new invention (hey, I got my start on a Commodore 64) will already know that using keystrokes can be far faster than reaching over for the mouse. Many AT users are also heavy keyboard users; a friend of mine "tolerates no rodents" in his computing. All of the above, then, can celebrate the co-creation of Keyboardian and InftyReader... this handy-dandy keystroke list for 234 commonly used applications. The list ranges widely from ubiquitous Microsoft applications to Google's apps and some great open-source apps like Open Office and Firefox.

I do notice that Apple is conspicuously absent, with only Safari and iTunes represented. Hmm. I also noticed that there are no screenreaders in the list. Double hmmm.

If you are one of the mouse-dependent crowd and have no clue why someone would memorize all these keystrokes, think about how much faster using a two-key combination (such as CTRL+C) is than taking your hand off the keyboard, moving it to the mouse, right-clicking, moving the mouse to the Copy command in the context menu, then moving your hand back to the keyboard. There's been some studies done in Denmark, as well, that indicate mousing is harder on your body. For an interesting discussion on mouse vs. keyboard efficiency, check out this article on Slashdot.

Thanks much to Steve Jacobs at IDEAL Group for the heads-up on this one!

If you've got a favorite source for keystrokes, or if you'd like to add to the ever-popular keyboard vs. mouse debate, let's hear from you in the comments!

Friday, August 1, 2008

Speech-to-Text and Vice Versa on the Mac

This week, a colleague on a listserv was asking about AT software for Macs in a college setting. Specifically, he was asking about speech-to-text and text-to-speech programs. With a few cosmetic tweaks here and there, here's my response...

The built-in stuff

  • VoiceOver is a screenreader built in to the operating system. Like most screenreaders, there's a lot to learn in using it. For help, check out a tutorial series.
  • Speech is a built-in text-to-speech functionality that works really well in TextEdit, though also works in other Mac apps. Go to the TextEdit menu, choose Services, and then Start Speaking. You can customize this in System Preferences. You can also download a script that will make an iTunes-compatible audiobook from a text document.
  • Voice control of your computer is also built in to the Mac with Speech Recognition. Lifehacker did a great guide to using Speech Recognition.

Other software

  • MacSpeech Dictate is a speech-to-text program built on the Dragon engine. Works well, though not quite as fully functional as Dragon (yet - it just came out in April).
  • Kurzweil's Mac flavor is as fully featured as the Windows program. It does have a problem reading color files that were generated on a Windows Kurzweil machine (ask me how I found this out!), though Kurzweil tells me they are working on this. However, it's got lovely iTunes integration, if you want to take your text on the road.
  • GhostReader does a fantastic job of text-to-speech, with some really nice Acapela voices. Cheap, too, at around $30. I blogged GhostReader earlier, along with some other good, inexpensive Mac apps.
If you know of other good text-to-speech (and vice versa) apps for the Mac, yell 'em out in the comments!