Giving Eyes To the Unsighted

It's a fact that there are millions of blind and visually impaired people in the United States. In fact, if you count all forms of restrictive visual impairment, the total is about 10 million people in the United States alone, according to the American Federation for the Blind.

For systems builders, this is an opportunity not only to offer their services as Good Samaritans but also to develop new clientele. But first, let's start with a simple exercise. Reach up and turn off your monitor. Now ask yourself, can you use your computer? Welcome to the world of the blind. For them, the emphasis on graphical user interfaces (GUIs) is a bad joke.

While the accessibility industry offers a vast range of solutions, many are expensive. In this Recipe, we'll examine some of the more inexpensive approaches a systems builder can take to serve blind and other visually impaired clients.

Windows XP's Built-In Resources

It's a little-known fact that three apps for the disabled are built into Windows XP: Narrator, Magnifier and On-Screen Keyboard. Find them by selecting Start > All Programs > Accessories > Accessibility.

Windows' Narrator program announces screen events and reads text in several apps and environments--among them, Notepad or WordPad, the control panel and the desktop.

The On-Screen Keyboard lets users click screen keys with a mouse, "dwell" on a screen key and let the software notice it, or put the application in scan mode and click when the desired key is highlighted. This allows typing via a one-click joystick.

The Windows Magnifier adds an extra on-screen window that zooms in on the area around the mouse pointer or text-entry point. All three applications have one thing in common: a disclaimer that they have a "minimal level of functionality." Nevertheless, they illustrate what can be done. By testing them, you'll better appreciate what fully functional systems can do.

Moving Beyond Windows

Blind computer users consider the era of MS-DOS and CP/M the good old days. That's because screen activity with those older operating systems was so straightforward: just line after line of unformatted text, which a screen reader could simply speak aloud.

But with the advent of Microsoft Windows and other GUIs, the screen reader is confronted with an ever-changing landscape of windows and dialog boxes. It has to announce new windows, explain the presence of frames, tables and hyperlinks, help the user navigate through the screen elements using keyboard commands and read aloud any text it encounters along the way. In addition, the output can be vectored to a Braille device so users can read it through their fingers.

Screen readers are the foundation for blind computer users. Today, there are three main screen readers for Windows: Market-leader JAWS (Job Access With Speech) for Windows from Freedom Scientific, which retails for about $895; Window-Eyes from GW Micro, which costs $795; and HAL Screen Reader from U.K. vendor Dolphin Computer Access, which sells for $800.

Configuring a reading system is where a consultant can add value. With the right software, an unsighted person can lay printed material on a scanner and have it read aloud by the software. Standalone systems can cost $3,000, including a PC, scanner, keypad controller and extras, but a serviceable system could be configured for less.

The most popular text-reading software packages are OpenBook from Freedom Scientific and Kurzweil 1000 from Kurzweil Educational Systems. OpenBook costs $995, has three different optical-character-recognition engines, and will "skim" by reading only the first (or first and last) sentences of paragraphs, letting the user jump in where desired. For reading the text aloud, it has two different synthesizer algorithms: a natural-sounding one when reading for pleasure and a droning one when editing. The Kurzweil 1000 also costs $995.

Lamont Wood is a freelance writer based in San Antonio.