Doug.Geoffray@f8.n369.z1.fidonet.org (Doug Geoffray) (11/02/90)
Index Number: 11474
[This is from the Blink Talk Conference]
AP> No, no one here has had a possitive experience using Protigy
AP> because even its text is written in pixels. Do not buy it!!
AP> There is no speech product currently on the market that will
AP> work with Protigy. IBM "is working on it". How long they will
AP> take to do this I dunnow. There are other programmers who are
AP> working on interfacing speech with graphics programs, but as
AP> far as I know there is nothing available yet.
Ann,
I have talked with IBM and went to their seminar at Closing The Gap.
They are not developing technology which is capable of reading graphics
from a screen. It is true they are developing a version of the screen
reader for OS/2 and later Windows and Unix. However, they are capable
of reading the screen because of the standard interface used in OS/2 and
Windows not because they are interpreting each pixel on the screen and
converting them to a character. There is a big difference between the
two. Therefore unless prodigy runs under windows or OS/2, I seriouly
dought it will speek for some time.
The technology for creating a screen reader for OS/2, Windows and even
the Macintosh is really not that difficult anymore as long as the operating
system has the required hooks available. I am sure you will see these
environments available shortly. I am not saying that within a weekend I
could create such a product but with a little effort, the sky is the limit.
Regards,
Doug
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