Insomnia has its benefits - Google Reader & LifeHacker

For some reason, the hours between 3 and 5:30 seem to be a difficult time for me to actually stay asleep. But that’s good news, blog readers, because last night I had a wonderful time prancing around the ‘Net and found great blog fodder!

Some of you may have already found Google Reader, another of the ever-growing number of free applications provided by the advertising geniuses at Google. Google Reader is an RSS feed, which brings updates from websites directly to your desktop (or browser, as in this case). Think of it a bit like a running stock ticker for news, exciting blog entries, or anything else on which you want to keep up to date. Ho-hum, not really blog-worthy news, right?

Well, think again. Google has just announced that its Reader feed is accessible to screen readers! This is news, because most dynamic (constantly updating) content on the web is not screen-reader friendly. Granted, there are limitations… it’s currently only accessible to Firevox, the self-voicing extension for Firefox, and Firefox 3, which is still in beta. However, this is a step in the right direction, making dynamic content usable to people with print disabilities.

The other place I spent a lot of time last night (or morning?) was on LifeHacker. Ok, any site that easily steals an hour from you without you knowing it doesn’t really qualify as saving you time… but in my defense, I was catching up on stuff posted there that had long passed me by! While LifeHacker isn’t really assistive technology per se, I did find a large number of items that would be of especial interest to those with learning disabilities or ADD. Particularly interesting were the items in the “Mind Hacks” category… all kinds of ways you can train your brain to work more efficiently.

SayIt Review & Alternate Text Options (part 2)

I downloaded the trial version of SayIt and played with it quite a bit. What follows is my personal review - your experience may vary!

On the plus side, it does read text aloud, it is very inexpensive, and it’s one of very, very few Palm text-to-speech applications. For those who are looking for an equivalent experience to even inexpensive text-to-speech applications (such as Natural Reader, Universal Reader, or Apple’s VoiceOver), you are bound to be disappointed. Essentially, SayIt copies text to a Memo-like application, then reads it aloud. You cannot specifically select which text (say, a paragraph from a four-page document) to copy - it will copy all of the available text in the open document. There were no navigation tools to start or end a specific point or repeat a section without repeating the entire document from the beginning. The voice is clunky and slow, with no ability to change speed or pitch. For most assistive technology users, this product probably won’t fit your needs. The good news is that at least it’s out there! Perhaps future versions will contain the features we need to make SayIt a viable option for AT users.

As promised in the Spotlight on Alternate-Format Text, let’s take a look at the options that SOU’s alternate-format text users have for receiving their texts. In the earlier blog, we looked at the many format choices alt text users have: electronic text accessed through a variety of programs, MP3s. Again, all of these have advantages and disadvantages. In addition to these choices, the way the alt text gets to you can also take many forms.

• The most popular output choice tends to be CDs. They are easily portable and not so small that they get lost in the bottom of a backpack too often. With electronic text, we can put each book on a separate CD, or we can often put several together on one CD. MP3s usually take several CDs per book, depending on the speed of the reading voice. CDs do need to be returned to DSS by the last day of the quarter in which they are checked out.
• We can set up a way for you to download your book files over the internet through an ftp site called YouSendIt. This is a free site. When files are ready, we compress them in a .zip file and upload them to YouSendIt. YouSendIt then sends the student an email, saying the files are ready for download and giving them a specific address to go to to do so. For students with a fast internet connection, this can be a quick and easy way to get your alt text, with no CDs to return. (Students will instead be responsible for deleting these files from computers or any storage devices at the end of the quarter.)
• Students can bring in a flash drive (also called jump drives, USB drives, or memory sticks) and we can download alt text directly to these. Flash drives are incredibly portable and have recently become very cost-effective ways of transporting fairly large amounts of data.
• We can download MP3 files directly to a student’s iPod or other MP3 player. Some MP3 players also have speed controls for audiobooks - thus handling one of the downsides to receiving books in MP3 format.
• Some alt text books can be sent by email as well. Generally, these are shorter, no-graphics type books that we can compress in .zip format and still fit in an email. Email is not recommended for students who are using a dialup connection, as files can be large enough to cause long download times. We email only to students.sou.edu addresses and will not use other, personal email accounts. Please note that if you are forwarding your SOU email to another account, the size restrictions that account has may limit your ability to receive alt text files in this way.

Text to Speech for the Palm?

I admit it - I’m addicted to my handheld computer. Currently, I have a fairly basic Palm Zire31

that I bought when my beloved Treo 90 bit the dust. (I seem to have a penchant for buying handhelds right before they are discontinued.) One of the things I love most about handhelds is the enormous number of applications you can find, with many of them being free or very inexpensive.

Tonight I was roaming the web and got a wild hare to see if any text-to-speech programs were available for the Palm. Lo and behold, they exist! I haven’t tried any of these yet, so if someone else has, I’d love to see comments.

SpeakMemo will read aloud any text in the Memo application. Depending how much text you put into a memo, this could be helpful for users with dyslexia or other visual processing disabilities.

More exciting is the SayIt application. It claims to be “the only global TTS application for the PalmOS that works with most applications with edit text capabilities.” It’s very reasonably priced, so I may just download this and see what it can do.