Hello Rochelle,

Thanks for emerging from lurkdom.  While we're on the subject of
talking browsers, you might be interested in WordAloud, which was
developed as an off-line browser suitable for elderly people who
might have a visual impairment and problems of manual dexterity,
and who need something really simple to operate.  (This development
was part funded by the European Union, in the SeniorOnline project.)

As you must know, as editor of Large Print Reviews, the majority
of "blind" people (people who would qualify as legally blind) have
some useful vision and can read very large print.  The majority are also
elderly and technophobes.  WordAloud tries to satisfy these people,
while also catering for totally blind people who have not invested,
or cannot afford to invest, in expensive screen readers.  It has
a built-in speech synthesiser, and a word-at-a-time display which
displays the words at the same time as they are spoken.  This type
of display allows magnification up to 150 points, giving characters
on the screen up to about 1.5 inches in height.  You can adjust the
colour scheme to suit yourself: e.g. with white characters on a blue
background.  If you don't need the speech, you can run the display
at up to 500 words per minute.  You will find you can read faster than
off the printed page - some people find they can read three times as fast.
And you will read very much faster than with a screen magnification
program where you are scrolling all the time.

WordAloud is very simple to operate.  It can be operated with mouse
alone, or keyboard alone.  The basic reading operations (pause, play,
step sentence, step word) can be performed with the four cursor
keys or equivalent onscreen buttons.

WordAloud can be downloaded free from www.wordaloud.co.uk for evaluation.
Might you consider to review it in your magazine, Rochelle?

Cheers from Chiswick,

John
--
In message  <[log in to unmask]>
[log in to unmask] writes:

>Hi everyone,
>
>If you don't mind me coming out of lurkdom -  I recently wrote a review on the
>WeMedia Talking Browser.  It can be found at:
>http://www.largeprintreviews.com/wemedia.chtml
>
>I really liked the browser except the minor points mentioned in the review. I
>use Windows 98 and I've not experienced any problems with the browser.
>
>Take care,
>Rochelle
>
>--
>
>Rochelle Caviness
>Editor, Large Print Reviews
>
>http://www.largeprintreviews.com
>[log in to unmask]
>
>Carol wrote:
>Has anyone tried downloading and using the new WeMedia
>Talking Web Browser
>and if so has it caused you any computer problems?

--
Access the word, access the world! -- Try our WordAloud software!!

John Nissen, Cloudworld Ltd., Chiswick, London, UK
Tel:   +44 (0) 845 458 3944 (local rate in the UK)
Fax:   +44 (0) 20 8742 8715
Email: [log in to unmask]
Web:   http://www.cloudworld.co.uk and http://www.wordaloud.co.uk