Universal Access VoiceOver
The Universal Access VoiceOver tool will be of great value in a severely handicapped class.This tool will give students a voice and the ability to communicate in a similar way of other students. They have not worked all the kinks out of the system, but there are more positive features than negative ones. The article below is about the voice over program and it gives a great deal of information on how it works. This would be a great asset to any school.
First Look: Leopard first looks: Universal Access
VoiceOver changes are the center of improvements to OS X’s accessibility
Title of my article
First Look: Leopard first looks: Universal Access
VoiceOver changes are the center of improvements to OS X’s accessibility
by Christopher Breen, Macworld.com
Brief summary
What is Leopard VoiceOver?
When Apple introduced Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, it included a new element to Universal Access, the suite of utilities for users with physical impairments. That new element, VoiceOver, would recite the name of any onscreen items you hovered your mouse over using one of Apple’s robotic text-to-speech voices.
The version of the VoiceOver utility that will ship with OS X 10.5 appears to be quite similar to the original Tiger version, but with some important improvements—support for Braille displays and note takers, control over the amount of information VoiceOver recites, easier navigation, and a new computer voice that speaks in a more natural way.
How it is used
VoiceOver uses tools built into the Mac OS to communicate to users what their Mac is doing. Specifically, it uses OS X’s built in Accessibility Hierarchy data structure that represents the user interface. When you switch VoiceOver on, it looks for the name of objects users interact with—buttons, fields, and menus, for example—and speaks the name of the selected item (and its environment—the name of its host application and enclosing window, for example—when it’s first called).
Usefulness
It is very useful for anyone with a physical impairments.Leopard’s VoiceOver will support Grade 2 contracted Braille devices. Such devices include displays that communicate through a silicone ribbon or pad that changes shape to mimic traditional braille characters as well as note-takers, devices that include special braille keyboards. Plug one of these Grade 2 devices into the USB port of a Mac running Leopard, and it should work out of the box, allowing both braille input and output.
Who is the auduience?
Query the typical Mac user, and they’ll likely tell you that they weren’t aware of VoiceOver’s existence. There’s very little about the new version of VoiceOver that’s going to change that. Those with physical impairments will laud its improvements. Those who don’t require VoiceOver’s services may still be tempted to have their Mac read to them now that it contains a voice that’s worth listening to.
Disadvantage
People may choose Alex voice over the more robotic voice. Alex sound is a more natural synthesized voice. I’ve seen nothing of the Voiceover interface so there’s no telling just how configurable its audio feedback will be. Apple’s revealed enough about the Alex voice to assure us that it will be just another choice in the list of synthesized voice, which you’ll be able to select from the Text to Speech tab within the Speech system preference.
Advantages
For those with physical impairments VoiceOver has been a great, and inexpensive, help; third-party add-ons that provided VoiceOver’s services cost several thousand dollars. But the original VoiceOver tends to be a little verbose. Allowing users to tell VoiceOver to cut to the chase will make using the program less tedious.
Physically impaired or not, users driven to distraction by Apple’s robotic voice often turned to the more natural synthesized voices offered by Cepstral. The existence of Alex is going to make these voices unnecessary for a number of people. It’s also likely to nudge those who wouldn’t have dreamt of using a talking Mac to see what a Mac running Leopard has to say.
[ Senior Editor Christopher Breen wrote about Tiger’s Universal Accessibility features in the Tiger preview from the July 2005 issue of Macworld. ]
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