Hello!

You might be interested in knowing about the 30-day trial of the IBM Home
Page Reader that we at our medical library are now viewing for possible
installation at our new special needs workstation.  The software is very
reasonably priced, I hear (less than $150 bucks), and the product looks
good so far.  The voice can be changed according to gender or age group.

http://www-3.ibm.com/able/hprtrial3.html

From blurb:
                          Home Page Reader (HPR) is a spoken on-ramp to the
Information
                          Highway for computer users who are blind or
visually impaired.

                          This innovative product provides unprecedented
Web access by quickly,
                          easily, and efficiently speaking Web page
information. HPR provides a
                          simple, easy-to-use interface for navigating and
manipulating Web page
                          elements and utilizes the tremendous capabilities
of IBM's ViaVoice
                          text-to-speech(TTS) text-to-speech synthesizer
for speaking.

                          Using the keyboard to navigate, a person who is
blind or who has a
                          visual impairment can hear the full range of Web
page content provided
                          in a logical, clear, and understandable manner.

                          Home Page Reader can speak text, frames, image
and text links,
                          alternate text for images and image maps, form
elements including
                          JavaScript, graphics descriptions, text in column
format, and data input
                          fields. It even includes special table navigation
features that allow users
                          to understand even the most complex tables, such
as television listings.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Anna Ercoli Schnitzer
Information Services Librarian
Taubman Medical Library
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI
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