Muggle Tech for Blind (was: Re: Wizard Challenge Game)

[Mrs.) Lee Storm (God Is The Healing Force]

[Bohcoo Wrote]:
| I didn't realize you are totally blind, Lee. You are teaching me
| something new here: Does a screen reader let you hear what I am
| typing right now, or are your reading it with braille? I don't mean
| to sound stupid -- I am just unfamiliar with the technologies
| available to visually impaired folks.

[Lee]:
I was going to take this off list, but perhaps some of these questions
reside in many minds. :-)

Well, I refrain from using braille except for choir lyrics; everything else
I use with audio, either by computer or other.

The braille displays are really expensive and somewhat flaky, IMO, and
involve carrying around an extra piece of cumbersome equipment when I want
to be as portable as possible with my laptop. <Grin>

Screen-readers convert to audio any text-based or properly encoded item they
see, so everything you type to me comes through, as well as everything I
type.  Some people like to use letter-by-letter mode, so everything they
type comes out letter by letter...slows me down big time (I type about
90-something words a minute).  So I stick to word mode.

Other things that can be set are things like the amount of punctuation
either in reading or writing mode, caps marks, etc.

By "properly encoded," I mean that some things are programmed into the
screen-reader which are general to all windows functions...complicated to
explain, so I won't get into all of that here.

[Bohcoo]:
| The Wizard Challenge Game IS a word-thing vs. a graphics-game-thing,
| but it could be that since the questions and answers zoom onto the
| page with a little sound effect, it could translate as the graphics
| blob. Bummer.

[Lee]:
Right...and it could also be that my Pop-up Stopper is making things
complicated, too, but I refuse to shut it down.  <Evil Grin>  But, yes, the
text is probably a graphical representation of text, not true text or
graphical with OCR (Optical Character Recognition).  The oft-touted PDF
file, fore example, is often a source of grief and pain, especially if its
source was a scanned file.  The file comes up "Empty file."  Sure, there's
something in it for those who can see it, but for me, it's--uh--empty.

[Bohcoo]:
| Have you always been blind or do you have memory of seeing? And, wow,
| I can only imagine what Hogwarts and all the characters must "look"
| like to you! Does the screen reader describe the maps and things like
| that from sites like the Lexicon? (Or, maybe that isn't such a good
| idea -- sometimes things don't look the way they sounded on paper!)

[Lee]:
I was born blind, but have an incurable curiosity so I do want to know the
color of people's hair and eyes, etc. :-)

As far as what the characters might look like, well, way before there was
TV, there were books and radio and, the all-important tool, the imagination.
So, using JKR's words, I create my own images.  I don't have to suffer too
much from movie contamination. <Grin>  But, I will say, the cast is pretty
dead on. <Snicker.

Now, as far as maps on the Lexicon, I'm unaware of them, probably because I
never looked for them and generally have my pictures turned off on load
because it slows down the load process to have them on and I want speed, not
pictures. <Grin>

Hope this answers some of your questions and those of anyone else on the
list.  Please dump me a note off list if you want to take this further, not
only Bohcoo, but anyone.

Cheers,

Lee :-)

Do not walk behind me,    | Lee Storm
I may not care to lead;   | N2FGC
Do not walk before me;    | n2fgc at arrl.net (or)
I may not care to follow; | n2fgc at optonline.net
Walk beside me, and be my friend.