This is my article in <a href="http://www.blindskills.com/dialogue.html"Dialogue magazine It deals with migrating from using the keyboard to using speech-recognition.
The article also makes a special reference to screen readers and other bridging technology like J-Say
The article has been published in the November December Issue.
This is my live qik channel. It shows whatever video I took last and may also show a live stream if you catch it when I am broadcasting.
[qik user=”slimprize” width=”320″ height=”280″]
There have been several attempts to read printed letters using the vOICe. I have one way to do this. This is not the only way and I am still learning what letters look like. My reading has been limited to recognizing the shapes of letters using the vOICe. I had planned to use the windows magnifier to enlarge the size of the letters. I have used notepad as my wordprocessor of choice.
1. Set the font size to 72 or, if you want to try the magnifier, set the magnification level to 6.
2. Set the vOICe to follow the mouse pointer and activate negative video. Also, set the speed to quarter.
3. Hit windows+m to minimize everything.
4. Navigate to notepad.
5. If you are not using the magnifier, then set the font size to 72. If you are using the magnifier, do not bother doing this.
6. If using a screen reader, then get your mouse cursor to follow the insertion pointer.
7. Write the word CAT.
8. Navigate to the letter “C”.
9. Sit back and enjoy the soundscape.
10. You can activate the edge detection feature but there is no real need to do so.
Also, be careful with the letters “A” and “L”. They seem to run together. Other letters may also do this. It is possible to slowdown the vOICe even further. The settings like half speed and quarter speed are relative to the normal speed of sounding the soundscape. You change this normal speed and then slow things down. You change the speed via the Edit | Visual Sound Preferences | Visual sound
duration (s) per video frame dialogue box.
It will make reading words easier. Of course, with practice, you can increase your reading speed. To navigate from word to word, use the arrow keys.
This is a paper on the the vOICe co-authored by Jamie Ward and Dr. Meijer.
The abstract is here
Zachary Reynolds “novel training paradigm for The vOICe involving active, cooperative tasks”. A popular task involved users using the vOICe to play a form of tag in which two subjects wearing The vOICe try to turn off their opponent’s luminescent red
hearts which are attached to their backpacks.
I have created a shape exerciser to compliment the exercise mode of the vOICe. The program lets you build your own shape library for exercising. The shape exerciser is a tool for practicing shape recognition. You can navigate to the following link for downloading the shape exerciser.
Shape Exerciser Zip Installer
With thanks to Jacob Kruger for the file hosting.
The idea behind this post is to illustrate how color and some descriptions can be used to interpret an image that a person has never seen. As always, these images have been percieved using the The vOICe.
<a href="http://www.blindliving.com/"A friend posted about nuthatches on twitter so I decided to take a look at them. There are several kinds of nuthatches but for our purposes, we will focus on the white-breasted nuthatch and the red-breasted nuthatch.
See the below link for the red-breasted nuthatch.
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/PHOTO/MED/red_breasted_nuthatch_1.jpg
see the following link for a picture of the white-breasted nuthatch.
http://www.birdsasart.com/White-breasted-Nuthatch-soft-light-VERT-_H2D8927-McLeansville,-NC.jpg
I have never seen a bird before so do not have an idea of its shape. I know what a breast is. I heard the entire image and then decided to find the red breast. The red color filter did the job so I now knew where the breast was. I now slowed down the speed to quarter. There is a wavy line as you approach the right of the image at the left and reach the correct height. I suspect that is the stripe of the nuthatch but I cannot be sure. As for the wings and the bill, I do not know where they are. They are bound to be there but my knowledge of bird anatomy is rather limited to be able to find them.
As for the white-breasted nuthatch, not much to say except that the shape is interesting. The color filter does not help here but I have not tried all the color.
Also, I tried the skin filter and got silence. I take it that the skin filter is optimized for human skin?
Jacob Kruger pointed out that the orange filter gave the most interesting results in the red breasted nuthatche’s case. If the description at http://www.birdsource.org/ibs/IBSspecies/rebnut/index.html is correct, then the orange portion is the under part of the nuthatch.
Finally, to read more about the nuthatch, navigate to the following link.
http://www.cjwildlife.com/news/id=30/upside-down_birds___courtesy_of_the_vermont_institute_of_natural_science_-_vins.html