robertj@tekgen.bv.tek.com (Robert Jaquiss) (05/13/91)
Index Number: 15521
This article is reprinted with the permission of Linda Helgerson,
President of CD-ROM ENDuser, Disc Magazine, and CE-ROM End User.
It is intended for the use in the CBFB magazine. Any other
reprinting must be authorized by Ms. Helgerson.
For EndUsers
The New Braille: A Look at CD-ROM For Blind Users -- Part I
by Joe Lazzaro
What would you do if you couldn't read a dictionary or an
encyclopedia? What if you had to enlist family or friends to look
up facts and figures for you, or to write simple correspondence
for you? The blind endure problems like this every day, but many
of these needs are being met with sophisticated electronic
wizards such as synthesized speech, large print processing and
braille access terminals for personal computers that work with
CD-ROM.
In this three-part series, I will discuss the evolution of
information storage for the blind -- braille, talking books,
personal computers and the all-important introduction and use of
CD-ROM systems. I will describe how speech synthesis, large print
and braille access systems work and highlight how to make CD-ROM
products more accessible to blind users.
>From Talking Books to PCs
Since the beginning of recorded history, the blind and
visually impaired have been behind the curve in terms of
information available to them. The simple fact is that the great
bulk of our communication is in the form of the written word, not
to mention graphs, charts and other pictorials. But with the
advance of technology, ways have been found around this
information-gathering problem, allowing the blind to use other
senses and methods to gather important data.
The first major breakthrough for the blind came with the
invention of the braille -- or Braille -- literary code, a
raised-dot writing system consisting of six dots for each
character, named for its inventor, Louis Braille. In this code,
dots are numbered one through six, and various combinations of
dots make up letters, numbers, punctuation and other symbols. As
braille continued to gain popularity, it became necessary for the
development of a braille mathematical code, a braille music code,
as well as Grade II braille -- a highly contracted form of
shorthand used by the bulk of blind braille readers. There is
even a braille computer code in use today, a specialized braille
alphabet to deal with the presence of personal and mainframe
computer systems.
Although braille does have many advantages for the blind and
visually impaired, there are still some great drawbacks to the
system. Braille is much larger than the printed alphabet, and a
printed page can take up to two or three times the normal space
when transcribed into braille symbols. At the University of
Massachusetts where I attended college, the braille encyclopedia
filled nearly half a room. Each individual volume was larger than
New York City's Yellow Pages. But even with these bulkier data
storage requirements, braille still opened up the printed word
for the blind in all its forms, but did little to represent
drawings or pictures, other than in crude raised line or dot
formats.
Because of its many complex contractions and rules, Braille
is also difficult to produce, and requires a highly trained
transcriber to translate textbooks and other important printed
matter. This task used to be performed by hand with a braille
typewriter, taking many weeks to translate even a single volume
of printed material into the raised dot format. But, over the
past five years, microcomputers have been pressed into the
braille transcription business.
Braille translation software can now quickly and easily
translate standard ASCII or other word processing files into
perfect braille hard copy, requiring no knowledge of braille in
the process. Braille is still with us today, and there is no sign
of its disappearance. In fact, there are strong groups among the
blind advocating for its consolidation into a standard braille
code, including literary, computer, mathematical and scientific
notation.
The next big breakthrough for the blind came in the form of
phonograph records, often called Talking Books. These books are
produced by the Library of Congress and are nationally
distributed through a network of regional lending libraries.
Although the Talking Book Program offers books on almost any
subject, from novels to nonfiction, they have largely excluded
reference works, such as dictionaries, encyclopedias and so on.
About twenty years ago, the audio cassette tape became an
important storage medium for talking books for the blind, and the
Library of Congress adopted the audio cassette tape as strong
competition to the older-style phonograph record talking books.
The readership of the National Library Service for the Blind
quickly discovered that many readers preferred to receive
material recorded on audio cassettes because of the increased
portability. The audio cassette tape was also more suitable to
perform subject searches, and this made possible the creation of
primitive first-generation talking dictionaries and
encyclopedias.
Yet, the basic problem of being able to store a dictionary
or encyclopedia still existed, and only a very few of these
reference works were ever committed to audio cassette tape. For
instance, there is a significant delay in the time needed for
searching the information. If a blind user wanted to look up
something in the dictionary tapes, he or she would have to
fast-forward or rewind through literally thousands of feet of
tape, an activity that could take up to an hour in most cases.
The information was all there, but in a highly inaccessible
format.
In 1982, the National Library Service completed a three-year
project of recording the Concise American Heritage Dictionary,
which is a "pocket" version of the larger, unabridged dictionary.
The Concise Dictionary has about 180,000 entries compared with
the 300,000 or more entries for a typical collegiate style
dictionary. This recorded work was tone-indexed and
voice-indexed. This meant that the user could fast-forward
through the tape, hearing select words while the rewind was
taking place. This dictionary cost about $80 and was originally
recorded on about 56 standard audio cassettes. As a consequence
of its structure, it took many minutes to look up an entry in the
dictionary, even for an experienced user. An inexperienced user
could take up to half an hour hunting for a particular word.
At roughly the same time, the American Printing House for
the Blind produced the World Book Encyclopedia on audio cassette
tape. This recorded encyclopedia sold for about $1,000 and came
with a non-standard cassette playback unit designed to locate
text on the tape via a complex numbering structure. Every entry
in the encyclopedia was numbered, and the user had to key in the
number of the entry, which caused the special playback unit to
fast-forward to the correct point in the tape. The user could
then shift the player into normal playback mode, and comfortably
listen to the desired entry. This system was the only one of its
kind, and blind users got much mileage out of this system. But,
clearly, there had to be a better and faster way.
It was obvious to the blind that something new had to be
developed, but the right technology simply had not yet arrived.
The personal computer was still almost two decades away, and
mainframe computers were largely unaccessible, because there was
no adaptive equipment. The blind had little or no access to
mainframe computer systems at the time because of an almost total
lack of proper adaptive equipment. There were some brave pioneers
that had created crude adaptive systems, allowing a select hearty
but few users access via morse code generators and crude
one-of-a-kind braille output terminals. This was the age of audio
cassette tape, and talking books, not floppy disks or random
access memory. But this did not last for long, and it took the
personal computer revolution to bring about a change more
important than the creation of braille itself.
For EndUsers
The New Braille: A Look at CD-ROM For Blind Users -- Part II
by Joe Lazzaro
The Microcomputer Evolution
Over the past five years, the personal computer revolution
has brought new vistas for the visually impaired. These
electronic wizards have created synthesized speech, large print
processing and braille translation, bringing forth megabytes of
previously inaccessible data in machine readable formats. The
beauty of the personal computer is that once information is
entered into its memory or disk storage system, it can become
totally accessible to a blind person via voice output, large
print or braille.
One of the first personal computers to become popular among
the blind was the Apple II from Apple Computer. This inexpensive
microcomputer became popular because of its use in the public
school systems and its popularity among special educators. The
first popular access method for the Apple II quickly became
synthesized speech, and the most popular speech synthesizer among
blind Apple II users rapidly became the Echo II from Street
Electronics Corporation of Carpinteria, CA.
The Echo II was very inexpensive, retailing for less than
$200 initially, making it highly affordable by the bulk of blind
computer users. This synthesizer had the software necessary to
verbalize all keystrokes and all text apppearing on the monitor.
Numerous specially written talking software packages, such as
word processors, databases, terminal emulators, spreadsheets and
other utilities, were made accessible on the Apple II using an
Echo II card. But the Apple II had one basic drawback --
mainstream programs for the most part could not be made to work
with either speech, large print or braille.
As the blind became more interested in using computers for
both home and work applications, it became obvious that using the
IBM PC would be very important, especially in terms of working in
the mainstream job market. About five years ago, the IBM PC
replaced the Apple II computer, opening up even more software and
hardware to the blind. It was possible to run mainstream software
on the IBM PC using either speech, braille or large print.
The IBM PC environment clearly offers the best hope for
blind computer users because of its adaptability with either
speech synthesis, large print or braille access systems. In order
to make an IBM PC "talk," one needs additional hardware and
software. The hardware comes in the form of a voice synthesizer
which can be either an internal plug-in circuit board or an
external printer-like device. The required for speech is called
a "screen reader" and is specifically designed to drive internal
or external voice devices by forcing all keystrokes and screen
text directly to the voice synthesizer. The screen reader also
performs many other important tasks, such as tracking color menu
bars, blinking text, reading pop-up windows or making select
regions of the screen silent to speed access.
The Soft-Vert program (Tele Sensory Systems, Mountain View,
CA) is a powerful screen reader that allows the user to drive a
number of popular voice devices, all the way from the expensive
DECtalk synthesizer from Digital Equipment Corporation to the
inexpensive Echo PC from Street Electronics Corporation. The
Soft-Vert screen reader works well with many off-the-shelf CD-ROM
products, but there is a limitation involved with the amount of
computer memory available for the CD-ROM. After the user has
loaded DOS and the Soft-Vert screen reader (or any other screen
reader for that matter), the user has considerably less than 640K
available to him or her. If a CD-ROM product demands a full 512K
of memory, than the product simply cannot be loaded into memory
alongside the screen reader program. A way to solve this is to
take advantage of expanded memory for the CD-ROM database engine,
so that the lower 640K of memory would be available for use.
There is also a trend developing among screen-reader
manufacturers to take advantage of expanded memory, so that the
DOS 640K memory barrier is not such a severe obstacle.
Just as it is possible to make a computer talk with the aid
of a voice synthesizer, it is equally possible to create a large
print environment for visually impaired computer users who can
benefit from increased magnification on the video screen. There
are two basic ways to add large print to a computer, using a
software-only approach or by adding both hardware and software to
the existing personal computer.
The software-only approach is considerably less costly than
adding large print hardware and has the advantage of being truly
portable. The current crop of large print programs enlarge the
video display by taking advantage of existing hardware, allowing
the user to increase the magnification of the video screen many
times. Since the image is enlarged, an entire screen cannot be
seen at one time. This may be thought of as looking at a large
spreadsheet, one screen at a time, and using the cursor movement
keys to move the screen around the spreadsheet. In the large
print environment, the user can move the large print window
around the "normal" screen text, and can zoom in or out of
selected regions. Select cursor attributes can also be tracked or
followed, such as highlight bars, blinking text, inverse video or
other screen or menu attributes.
The Large Print Disk Operating System (LP DOS) is a product
of Visionware of Boston, MA and retails for about $500. This can
work with most personal computers and provides large print
without any additional hardware. The can work with IBM Personal
System series computers and is a very popular package for
producing large print.
The Qwerty Large Print package from HFK of Lincoln, MA, is
another popular large print product and is compatible with
Hercules video adapter cards, making it widely compatible with
most IBM PC compatible systems. These large print generators,
like their speech screen reader counterparts, load into memory
immediately after the disk operating system (DOS) has loaded, and
thus have dominance over all other software currently loaded into
the machine.
Just as large print and speech can be added to most IBM PC
compatible personal computers, braille access is another popular
means of accessing a personal computer by blind computer users.
Current braille access systems take the form of terminals which
are interfaced to the personal computer via an expansion board or
through a serial RS232 port. In both cases, screen reading
software forces all keystrokes and screen text to the braille
terminal. The braille access software can also track screen
attributes, such as reverse video, blinking or highlight bars,
much as their speech and large print counterparts. The braille
provided by these systems is not the traditional hard copy form,
but is known as refreshable or paperless braille, which is
mechanically produced braille dots popping up and down on a
microprocessor controlled strip.
The Apple and IBM computers created a whole new world of
information for the blind, especially in the form of electronic
databases accessed via modem and documentation stored on
diskette. But the basic problem of reading large reference works
still hung in the background as a still yet unachieved goal, one
looking for a new technology to solve it. If only we had
computers that could store hundreds of megabytes of data, not
just a few tens of megabytes available on most hard drives, and
if only this storage medium could be portable, so that
information publishers could use it cheaply and effectively.
If only we had....
For EndUsers
The New Braille: A Look at CD-ROM For Blind Users -- Part III
by Joe Lazzaro
As if it was created for this important purpose, CD-ROM
offers one of the greatest hopes for the blind in terms of raw
information storage. In the past, the blind have been forced to
use audio tape or braille to obtain important information. These
previous storage devices were often not updated as frequently as
the printed texts they attempted to make accessible, forcing
blind users to make do with older dictionaries and reference
works. Naturally, it took a considerable amount of time to
transcribe a book or reference text into braille or audio
cassette tape. With the trend towards electronic data stored on
CD-ROM, the blind can obtain information at the same time as
their sighted counterparts.
When personal computers began to be used in force by blind
persons, it was first thought that the floppy diskette would
become the "new braille" or the new "talking book." But
information stored on floppy diskette can never fully solve the
problem of large reference work storage, as it would take well
over 1,000 diskettes to store a comparable amount of information
contained on a single CD-ROM product. But now that CD-ROM has
caught on among the mainstream computer-using public and is even
beginning to take hold among the blind, there are still very
great dangers that face the blind.
These potential threats come under the guise of programs and
operating systems that rely heavily on graphics, and it is
graphics merely for the sake of a more attractive screen format,
not for increased power or productivity for sighted computer
users. This is not to say that using a computer for drawing
pictures should be frowned upon, but replacing a friendly text-
based interface with a graphics interface merely for slickness'
sake will not do the blind community one bit of good.
The current generation of speech synthesis, large print and
braille access products has only limited success with graphical
interfaces. The large print environment is currently the only
adaptive aid for the blind that can work somewhat with graphics,
but many blind users do not have the vision perception necessary
to employ large print as an access device. The bulk of blind
computer users rely on speech synthesis, which cannot verbalize a
bit-mapped graphics screen and can only pronounce ASCII-based
extended graphics characters.
The other potential problem that CD-ROM might present to the
blind comes in the form of the 640K memory barrier imposed by the
MS-DOS operating system. As many readers will realize, the MS-DOS
operating system disallows programs larger than 640K to be loaded
into system memory. This has forced software developers, in an
endless scramble for more power, to utilize as much of this 640K
memory as possible, and many programs now require as much as 512K
of memory to operate correctly. This leaves barely enough room
for DOS to load alongside the desired application program, and
leaves no memory whatsoever for other TSR -- "terminate and stay
resident" -- programs, such as adaptive speech or large print
software.
Making CD-ROM More Accessible
The CD-ROM market has clearly exploded over the past several
years, and more titles are rolled out almost monthly. But if
you're a blind person using speech synthesis, large print or
braille access systems, the first question you ask yourself is:
Will my new CD-ROM title work with adaptive equipment?
There are many factors that contribute to the accessibility
of a CD-ROM product, or the lack of accessibility of that
product. I will present many of these factors, in order of
priority, but these may vary from user to user.
The first factor is that of available memory; that is, will
the CD-ROM software consume so much random access memory that
adaptive software cannot load into the machine at the same time?
There are few ways around this problem, and adding more memory
may not do the trick since DOS can address only 640K of memory at
a time. One may be able to use expanded or extended memory,
memory addressed higher than the DOS 640K memory, but not all
programs will run normally in expanded or extended memory.
A good solution to this problem might be for CD-ROM
manufacturers to allow their products to run in either expanded
or extended memory, which would allow for adaptive software to be
co- resident, as well as other TSR programs. There are memory
managers, such as Quarterdeck Office Systems Expanded Memory
Manager, which can assist somewhat in this area, but many
programs do not operate correctly when loaded into expanded
memory. The best course to take is that of experimentation.
If there is enough memory left over for adaptive software,
the next question to ask is about the selected user interface.
This is probably the most important question, aside from the
memory issue, since a perfectly usable CD-ROM title can be almost
totally useless to the blind if it relies too heavily on
graphics. This is not to say that graphics should not be employed
in CD-ROM products, especially when the data contained within the
products is all graphics, as with the case of maps and other
pictorials. I am stressing the misuse of graphics, graphics
merely for graphics' sake. If a graphics interface is important
to the programmer or product designer, then every effort should
be made to include a non-graphics-based user interface. The user
who wants to use the graphics interface can use his or her
interface of choice, and the blind or partially sighted user can
employ his or her own interface of necessity as well.
Another issue related to graphics has to deal with the use
of icons and ASCII graphics characters. The designer should avoid
using these characters whenever possible, especially when these
characters are used merely for purely decorative reasons. Many
screen readers can filter out punctuation marks used as
decorations, but these symbols slow down the speech processing
time and can confuse low vision users employing large print
access systems.
The programmer should also be careful when designing menu
systems, and take great care to make them stand out as much as
possible. For example, a good menu system employs highlight bars
or simple inverse video to make selections. A poor choice for a
menu system is one that places a graphics character or other
symbol next to the selected menu option. These interfaces are
difficult for speech output and can also confuse large print
users who need as much contrast as possible to aid in screen
navigation.
The next question might be, what does the screen layout look
like? Does it contain many windows, lots of overlapping windows
or pop-up dialog boxes? Most screen readers can read windows, but
if they do not pop up on the screen in the same place, or overlap
other windows, or cannot be made different colors, then the blind
user may have great difficulty interacting with the CD-ROM
product. An example of this is with the Grolier Electronic
Encyclopedia, which works very well until pull-down menus are
employed. These menus overlap the article text, and the borders
for these windows are ragged, making it difficult for the speech
user to define verbal windows.
A good rule of thumb to follow is simplicity -- the simpler
the better. This is not to say that screens must be boring, but a
screen that is too cluttered with information is bad for both
blind and sighted users alike. With all this in mind, let's look
briefly at some current CD-ROM titles in terms of how they work
with adaptive equipment for the blind and visually impaired.
Notes on Current CD-ROM Titles
The most popular CD-ROM titles among the blind happen to be
also some of the most popular titles for the mainstream audience
as well because of the great power and flexibility offered by
these titles. These titles include Microsoft Bookshelf, Grolier
Electronic Encyclopedia, McGraw-Hill Science And Technology
Reference Set and Ziff's Computer Library. I will briefly
describe each one of these useful products in terms of adaptive
equipment, and how they might be improved for blind users.
The Microsoft Bookshelf is probably the most popular CD-ROM
title being used by the blind community because it works
hand-in-hand with one of the most accessible word processors on
the market, namely WordPerfect. This CD-ROM is very well behaved
because of the way it paints the screen. The Bookshelf is a
pop-up utility, designed to terminate and stay resident, and can
be popped up with a "hotkey." Once the hotkey is struck, the top
two lines of the display screen become the Bookshelf menu bar.
The user can select choices from the menu bar by pressing an
Alt-Letter combination, such as Alt-D for dictionary, Alt-A for
almanac, and so on.
This makes it very simple for a blind user to operate, as
there are no highlight bars to track or complex menus to search
through. Once a menu option is chosen, a search window appears on
the screen, but this is relatively well behaved in terms of
adaptive equipment. If there is word processing text present on
the screen, however, the pop-up windows overlap the text, which
can be somewhat confusing at first. But this can be easily gotten
around by simply popping up the Bookshelf on top of an empty
workspace with no text present. Once a search string has been
entered, the Bookshelf is extremely well behaved with adaptive
equipment. The blind user can simply use the arrow-keys to move
around the text and can even easily use the clipboard functions
to store information back to the word processor's workspace.
Another popular CD-ROM title is the Grolier Electronic
Encyclopedia. This CD-ROM features a full 21-volume encyclopedia,
making it highly useful for a blind student or visually impaired
person needing to perform research functions. All in all, the
Grolier performs well with adaptive equipment, but there are some
problems associated with its layers of pull-down menus. These
menus are necessary for copying text to disk files or to the
printer.
The McGraw-Hill Science And Technology Reference CD-ROM is
another popular product and an important one to a science
student. This encyclopedia contains facts and articles regarding
physics, electronics, biology as well as the other hard sciences.
All in all, this is one of the most well-behaved CD-ROM titles
with adaptive equipment, because it presents text in a
straightforward manner with no pull-down menus, dialog boxes or
overlapping windows.
The search template is clean and uncluttered, with one query
allowed per line, making for easy reading with a speech
synthesizer, braille terminal or large print processor. The
article text always appears in the same place and does not
overlap other regions of the screen where other information is
displayed. The command line, placed conveniently at the bottom of
the screen, is easy to read with speech, large print or braille
processors because of its constant placement.
Ziff Communications' Computer Library is a full-text
retrieval system, stocked with articles and abstracts from dozens
of computer periodicals. This CD-ROM title is very useful for
blind users because of the sheer amount of information focusing
on the computer industry. The user interface resembles Lotus
Development Corporation's popular spreadsheet program 1-2-3. The
CD-ROM is fairly easy to use by blind or visually impaired
computer users, but as with most CD-ROM products, there is room
for improvement.
The system has much of the look and feel of the Lotus
spreadsheet, with the top three lines of the screen assuming the
responsibility of the "control panel." The control panel features
a menu bar which is highlight-driven. The user moves the
highlight bar across the menu choices to make selections. This
bar can be easily tracked by most adaptive equipment and is very
well behaved. The user can also make menu selections by striking
the Alt key along with the first letter of the desired menu
option which avoids the need to track the highlight menu bar.
Computer Library presents the article text in a
straightforward manner, and it is easy to move from article to
article with simple PgUp and PgDn keystrokes. The user can also
move to the top or bottom of the article by pressing the home or
end keys as well, making for intuitive operation. The system's
greatest problem comes with its pull-down menus which are
necessary for saving files or for printing. These menus overlap
the text box, and can sometimes be difficult to track with
adaptive equipment.
The Future: Hope or Disaster?
The entrance of CD-ROM technology has possibly been one of
the greatest advents for the blind and visually impaired since
the creation of the personal computer system itself. But the
adaptive hardware and software manufacturers have had to play a
constant game of catch-up with mainstream hardware and software
developers. The minute the adaptive vendors get an off-the-shelf
software or hardware package adapted properly, the mainstream
vendor rolls out yet another version of their product, often
changing user interfaces and other "constants" that made their
earlier versions adaptable in the first place.
The mainstream vendor community and adaptive vendors should
be in closer communication, so that new products can be made
adaptable while they are in development, not after they have been
brought onto the market when change is least likely to occur. The
advent of graphics-only interfaces, such as OS/2 and Presentation
Manager, also present potential threats to the blind community
because of the inability of current adaptive equipment to deal
with purely graphical operating systems and software.
As graphics takes an even greater share of the current
personal computing dollars, it is only a matter of time before
the CD-ROM industry feels the need to jump onto the bandwagon,
potentially leaving blind and partially sighted users behind in
the dust. The blind must not lose all the gains they have made
over the past decade in terms of access to information stored on
computer systems, and only partnerships between adaptive and
mainstream vendors and users can create an environment where
positive change does not disenfranchise the blind.
If development of adaptive equipment and mainstream CD-ROM
products continues in partnership, we can look forward to
boundless leaps of information equality and greater potential for
both blind and sighted alike.