Hello,
I recently acquired the responsibility of maintaining the assistive devices
for our library.

We have one stand-alone computer which has JAWS, pwWebSpeak, and Dragon
Dictate installed on it.

Again, I am new to this list and new to this technology so perhaps what I
am going to ask has already been discussed.

The problem is that all three of the devices can "read" web pages but they
all have limits especially with frames or any pages with heavy Java or as
it seems ANY type of new technology beyond Lynx.

JAWS reads the web pages but I'm sure you have JAWS you know that it reads
from side to side ignoring frames, etc...

pwWebSpeak understands such divisions (frames) etc.. but for any high
graphic web page (Disney web page is a good example) it is virtually
useless as it cannot even connect or read some pages.

Dragon Dictate is a bit cumbersome for me and the most I could do is
highlight a certain portion of the text and tell it to "Read that" and I
was dictated the information with a voice synthesizer I could barely
understand.

Can you tell I am frustrated!?!

Our version of Jaws is 3.2, pwWebSpeak is Release 2, and Dragon Dictate is
version 3.0.

Does anyone know of anything which can meet student's needs better?
anything being developed currently?

If not, I'll need to develop some patience and quickly!

Thanks in advance.
Ellen Dickman
Reference Librarian
Eden-Webster Library
475 E. Lockwood Ave
St. Louis MO 63119

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(314) 961-2660 x7819