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As a legally blind developer who has worked on accessibility for a while (see my HN profile for more), I'm inclined to agree with you. We use screen readers lik
by mwcampbell 5y ago
As a legally blind developer who has worked on accessibility for a while (see my HN profile for more), I'm inclined to agree with you. We use screen readers like VoiceOver because, practically, we often need to access mainstream applications. But I think we tend to get too dogmatic about going mainstream, to the point that some of us are disdainful toward systems designed specifically for blind people, particularly if they involve custom hardware. I've thought about developing a Linux desktop environment with a shell that's designed specifically for TTS, but that also includes a more conventional screen reader for running GUI applications.
Do you remember which speech synthesizer you were working with in the 80s?
- LeoPanthera 5y agoYes it was a software synthesizer called "Speech!" by Superior Software, blown into a ROM.
- mwcampbell 5y agoAh, must have been a BBC Micro-only thing, because I never heard about it.
- LeoPanthera 5y agoIt certainly was, yes. The BBC Micro had an optional hardware speech synth you could add, but it was very inflexible, limited to a fairly small set of pre-defined words. "Speech!" could render arbitrary phonemes which make it a lot more flexible.
- follower 5y agoFlexible enough to say the word "Citadel!" for example. :) </nostalgia>
- rjmunro 5y agoYou can try it in your browser; Go to https://bbc.godbolt.org/?&disc1=sth%3ASuperior%2FSpeech.zip https://bbc.godbolt.org/?&disc1=sth%3ASuperior%2FSpeech.zip, then copy and paste this to the paste thing at the top right: SPEECH SAY Hello *SAY How are you?
- follower 5y agoThanks for the link. :) My comment was intended as an incredibly subtle reference to the trivia that the BBC Micro game "Citadel" 'famously' had speech generated by "Speech!" in its intro screen (but appreciate you taking the time to share the link :) ) as shown here : https://youtu.be/Hu5vu9SgGZI?t=44 https://youtu.be/Hu5vu9SgGZI?t=44 For anyone else wanting to try out the emulator link in the comment above, HN messed up the formatting, so the asterisk prefixes were missed on the first two commands: *SPEECH *SAY Hello *SAY How are you?
- spicybright 5y agoI'm very curious about your thoughts. How would you make a shell designed for TTS?
- toast0 5y agoThere's emacspeak.