I apologize -- I should have been a bit more specific.  I am looking for
one of those pocket-size, stand-alone portable electronic devices that uses
a memory card onto which you load MP3 files from your computer.  In
addition to listening to audio renderings of text files, I would also like
to be able to listen to music while commuting or working out at the gym.

The Roadrunner simply won't do this -- it speaks ASCII text files through
its built-in doubletalk speech synthesizer only.  Maybe the new version
that APH is developing will handle MP3 files, but who knows when it will be
available, or what its actual capabilities and specifications will be.

I have tried a Sony Vaio Music Clip, which did have fairly accessible
controls (buttons, and no jog wheel and LCD menu system), but the
proprietary software, necessary because of their proprietary digital music
file format (not MP3), was almost impossible to use with a screen reader.
In fact, it would crash JAWS anytime you attempted to bring up the menus.
Window-Eyes was somewhat better in this respect and didn't crash, but the
interface was so complex and busy that it wasn't worth the hassle.

Still looking...

-- 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