Hi John and Jim,

Yet by allowing an application to be driven entirely by mouse, as well
as entirely by keyboard, you are increasing the universality.  In the
case of a screen reader, the mouse operation may be attractive for
a person with dyslexia.

There are other possible modes of input: keypad, chordal (such as
Perkins), switch and speech recognition.

But one should really distinguish between control and language input.
For a text reader, you only need control, and there are ways to make
the control of the application very simple, thus increasing the
universality.

On the output side, there is the visual: text, symbols, sign language;
the audio: speech; and the tactile: Braille, Moon and others.

But again, you can increase the accessibility in each mode.  For
example for text output you can display a word at a time, which
helps people who have difficulty in scanning along a line of text
and back to the start of the next line.  It also allows people to
read much faster - which you could say is increasing accessibility,
if you include an efficiency factor.  And you have possibilities
of magnification and choosing the colour scheme.

BTW, we aim to make WordAloud as universal as possible, currently
with two modes of input and two modes of output.  We are adding
symbols, and will be adding a novel serial tactile output in the future
to make WordAloud accessible for deafblind people.
Download a free evaluation version from http://www.cloudworld.co.uk.

Cheers,

John

P.S.  WordAloud is not a screen reader.  It reads text directly
from memory, not via interpretation of what is on the screen.
This means it can be even more simple to use!
--
In message  <[log in to unmask]>
John Gardner via [log in to unmask] writes:

>I'm getting sick and tired of manufacturers calling their access
>"universal" when they think to add some feature that makes it work for some
>disabled person.  It's universal only if it works for ALL
>people.  Otherwise it is an enhanced feature making it more
>user-friendly.  Nothing wrong with the latter - the more the better in my
>opinion.  But universal it is definitely not.
>
>John
>
>At 08:03 AM 5/7/02 -0600, you wrote:
>> >I wonder if they noticed the conflict in the idea of a mouse driven screen
>> >reader.
>>
>>I think that while such a feature can certainly be useful to some people,
>>it should hardly be called a screen reader.  If there is no speech access
>>to graphical controls, or truly interactive access to text, you simply
>>can't think of it as a screen reader -- maybe they should call it a text
>>reader or something like that.
>>
>>-- Jim
>>
>>------------
>>
>>James A. Rebman
>>
>>Cognitive Levers Project
>>Center for Life-Long Learning and Design
>>Department of Computer Science
>>University of Colorado, Boulder
>>
>>"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more
>>violent.  It takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the
>>opposite direction."
>>
>>  - E. F. Schumacher
>
>John Gardner
>Professor and Director, Science Access Project
>Department of Physics
>Oregon State University
>Corvallis, OR 97331-6507
>tel: (541) 737 3278
>FAX: (541) 737 1683
>e-mail: [log in to unmask]
>URL: http://dots.physics.orst.edu

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

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