Re: [Accessibility] Solutions

Thanks for this interesting case study. I think we need some real need cases like this to drive the integration effort seriously. There are many fragments of solutions that is available today. A lot of work is also going on in improving the accuracy and usability of these. We also need a lot of work on putting the pieces together in a flexible way. The accessibility team at CDAC Mumbai is seriously looking at these issues, and I am personally interested in this space and looking for collaborations. We are, of course, working with open source almost completely.

For this particular case, I guess, a simple not-too-much-computer solution may be the most effective. Get him to talk for say 30min or 1 hour, get it simply recorded as speech, send across the file to someone who can get it transcribed, and send back to him, where he can listen to it using a screen reader to see if he wants to make any edits, etc.

If he is able to use a computer (this may be a big challenge with the complex desktop interfaces of today's machines --- something we are trying to work on), you could setup a audio recorder+audio player+openoffice+orca combination. It may be helpful to get rid of most of the other applications from the system, and make these quickly accessible with a short-cut key or something. It is possible to create a specialised simplified desktop environment for this purpose.

On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 6:04 AM, Bill Cox <address@hidden> wrote:

Hi, Susan. Your father should dictate his text. If he can afford it,
services like speakwrite can help witth transcription. However, his
memoirs probably need an editor. My step-father did this for a good
friend who flew B-17 bombers in WWII. You or a friend or relative who
want to preserve his memories might be the best editors. Not that I
have much experience here, but elderly people I know who have aging
related impairments don't tend to adapt well to new technologies. I
would consider taping conversations with him, and take on the
transcription problem as a separate challenge. My step-father would
take is friend once a week to a shack where they could grill lunch and
tape a story. It took two years, but it turned out to be a heck of a
book, which I'll name simply because someone would just ask me
otherwise: No Foxholes in the Sky, by Harry Conley.

Anyway, the direction in FOSS accessibility software should and
generally does seem to put people's immediate needs first, and
software freedom second. I think the reason for this never-ending
debate is that people who want to contribute to accessibility software
wind up having to do so in a FOSS community. How else can people with
disabilities cooperatively write accessible software?

Bill

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From:	ശശി/शशि
Subject:	Re: [Accessibility] Solutions
Date:	Wed, 28 Jul 2010 10:15:29 +0530