Intro

[muthu raj]

Hello Everyone,

I am excited to be part of this group & I 've joined this group very recently. 

I work with persons with disabilities in India, Have over 15 years of experience working with persons with all types of disabilities such as sensory, physical & intellectual impairments. I have experience working with different assistive technologies  alternate input & out devices such as speech recognition, screen readers, refreshable braille displays, movement/motion, eye & heads control systems etc. I am  very fortunate to have trained several persons with severe, multiple & profound disabilities in the past 10 years in feasible, practical and most free/Open source AT tools & also have worked in creating several software & hardware based AT POCs & prototypes. 

Looking forward to network with like minded peers around the globe in creating and catering feasible and affordable AT solutions for persons with disabilities in developing & underdeveloped economies. 

Thanks & Regards

Muthuraj | Mangalore | India

https://www.linkedin.com/in/muthu-raj-14829522/

[thorsenrune]

While developing the ATPilot I wanted to try out how it could be make accessible for visually impaired. I find the actual tools (NVDA, Narrator etc) very frustrating. 
Can anybody help testing and suggesting  what to improve?

[Sandy Brain]

I've used this Chrome extension with some people that I support. It's not specifically for people with a visual impairment but it has some elements that might be useful and can be configured to suit an individual's needs. I too find tools such as NVDA frustrating, but I think that is largely due to the fact that I am used to using my eyes! 

EASY READING – Keeping the user at the digital original

[Fernando Botelho]

I agree with the earlier comment: NVDA and other screen readers are initially frustrating for those who are used to interacting with the computer primarily by using the mouse, i.e. those who are sighted.

 

There are improvements that myself and others can suggest, but they would not change the fact that persons who are totally blind, such as myself, must use keyboard commands to be efficient.

 

Thanks,

 

Fernando

________________

Fernando Botelho

Programme Specialist, Assistive Technology

Children with Disabilities Section, Programme Group Leadership Team

UNICEF

Three United Nations Plaza, Room 1048 - New York, NY 10017, USA

Mobile/WhatsApp/Signal: +1 (646) 371-6319

E-mail: fbot...@unicef.org | https://www.unicef.org/disabilities

 

Documents which might be of interest:

Global Report on Assistive Technology, articles on childhood and assistive technology and digital AT, as well as our supplies page and the new Assistive Product Specifications for persons with disabilities from the WHO.

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[muthu raj]

Hi All, 

I have been recently supporting deaf blind friend who found Jaws more frustrating with his braille display often facing applications such as word, excel & outlook, Oflate say about a year and half  he has shifted to NVDA with his orbit braille display and it has been working fine,  without much problems as he had with JAWS. I troubleshoot or interact with him by live chatting with him on notepad from his desktop accessed via remote tools such as team viewer or anydesk, as he lives in a different city and continuously travels, we never meet each other just once many many years ago though we interact and work together chatting via notepad accessed via remote desktop sharing. Also his deaf low vision peers who work with him in person enable high contrast settings or magnifiers at times. NVDA with a braille display seems to be working fine with him despite high contrast themes and magnifiers turned on as well as turned off. Occasionally whenever he faces problems with braille display I just update the NVDA & windows it works, But troubleshooting reinstalling drivers several times & OS reinstallation too doesn't fix his problem.

Also I remember working with one user with an onscreen keyboard & full screen magnifier upto 10X zoom, who used to use just one finger on touchpad to scroll and type through on screen keyboard - mouse over option. +  NVDA - Just to get audio confirmation to locate and navigate. For Low vision mouse users I feel NVDA is the best.

Btw what is the problem with NVDA? Requesting you to be specific. My assumption is that Narrator cannot be compared with NVDA. I have very rarely worked with narrator, but worked a lot in built in windows accessibility tools such as magnifiers (docked, lens & full screen modes) , 4 High themes(2 colors, white & black) Mouse accessibility options - pointers, inversions, show location when I press control options etc are BIG Yes, These works wonderfully with most of my low vision candidates I used to & still strongly recommend NVDA with these LV tools rather than Narrator. In fact we have an INDO NVDA version with eloquence with subsidised rates. - https://indo-nvda.saksham.org/

Since NVDA was pretty accessible and Narrator was way behind in the initial stage wrt usability & accessibility. It is leading & widely accepted, here in the asian sub continent. Hope my comment makes sense to the discussion.

Thanks & Regards

Muthuraj

To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/icocread/PR3PR05MB736948AB5268B0DF1BB5629BAD3C9%40PR3PR05MB7369.eurprd05.prod.outlook.com.

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Warm Regards

Muthuraj 

Mobile: 9739937062

• 
  

[Fernando Botelho]

Apologies, I did not mean to imply that NVDA is more frustrating than Jaws and others. In fact, I much prefer it over Narrator and Jaws. I find that NVDA keyboard choices are more intuitive.

 

What I was trying to say, is that for persons who are not very fluent in the use of the keyboard, such as some older persons, the use of keyboard commands can be challenging.

 

I have suggestions that could be implemented as an NVDA add-on, but this is probably not the right forum to talk about that.

 

Best regards,

 

Fernando

________________

Fernando Botelho

Programme Specialist, Assistive Technology

Children with Disabilities Section, Programme Group Leadership Team

UNICEF

Three United Nations Plaza, Room 1048 - New York, NY 10017, USA

Mobile/WhatsApp/Signal: +1 (646) 371-6319

E-mail: fbot...@unicef.org | https://www.unicef.org/disabilities

 

Documents which might be of interest:

Global Report on Assistive Technology, articles on childhood and assistive technology and digital AT, as well as our supplies page and the new Assistive Product Specifications for persons with disabilities from the WHO.

 

To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/icocread/CA%2Bpt93AVrqxY%2BnndnOxg86PcJYS6LocaCJOsiTE1TadAQoFrag%40mail.gmail.com.

[Rune Thorsen]

Dear Fernando, Muthuraj and Sandy, it is great to read your insightful informations and in prompted me to make the entry on the ATPilot.

Here it is: Finding free assistive solutions-NVDA ORCA screen reader (https://thorsen.it/ATPilot/archives/2549)

It could also be a test of the functionality and satisfaction questionnaires (IPPA and QUEST). What do you think?

Some webpages have a readaloud function and I have worked on implementing it but I do not know if it is useful as I suspect people would be using their screenreader anyway. What do you think?

Thanks for your input.

Rune

[Fernando Botelho]

Hi Rune,

 

In general people will have their own screen reader, Orca, NVDA or otherwise. I do not believe that screen reading capabilities and screen magnification capabilities integrated into the web page itself help very much. Any effort invested in that is probably better spent with the actual accessibility of the site, links, images, buttons, forms, etc.. But I expect you already took care of that long ago.

 

Best regards,

 

Fernando

________________

Fernando Botelho

Programme Specialist, Assistive Technology

Children with Disabilities Section, Programme Group Leadership Team

UNICEF

Three United Nations Plaza, Room 1048 - New York, NY 10017, USA

Mobile/WhatsApp/Signal: +1 (646) 371-6319

E-mail: fbot...@unicef.org | https://www.unicef.org/disabilities

 

Documents which might be of interest:

Global Report on Assistive Technology, articles on childhood and assistive technology and digital AT, as well as our supplies page and the new Assistive Product Specifications for persons with disabilities from the WHO.

 

From: Rune Thorsen <thors...@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2022 8:50 AM
To: icoc...@googlegroups.com; Fernando Botelho <fbot...@unicef.org>; muthu...@gmail.com
Subject: Re: [ICoCreAD] Re: Screenreaders

 

Dear Fernando, Muthuraj and Sandy, it is great to read your insightful informations and in prompted me to make the entry on the ATPilot.

[Hanif Kruger]

Hello Rune,

Most screen reader users would use their screen reader of choice.  Mostly, overlays are more in the way than anything else.  Good design and WCAG standards would be deemed more critical in considering issues when designing webpages.

Thanks.

Regards.

Hanif

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Regards.
Hanif Kruger

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iNum: +883510001190854

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[manisha4aug]

so true I felt so irritated with NVIDYA the voice quality is so poor and slow it was frustrating and I wonder no one has worked on this so far. we must work on a tool that makes screen reading easy and it should be available free of cost. I am okay with helping out if you need any help regarding this. 

[Fernando Botelho]

I had understood that the keyboard commands were the issue. If the TTS voice is the issue, then I can share that ATscale/UNOPS is interested in supporting the development of TTS voices for under-represented languages. They had a call for proposals in UNGM fairly recently.

 

For other languages there are already a number of free and open source voices, which have good quality. eSpeak, which is the default in NVDA is just what comes included. Other options exist, including voices that come with Windows itself.

 

Best regards,

 

Fernando

________________

Fernando Botelho

Programme Specialist, Assistive Technology

Children with Disabilities Section, Programme Group Leadership Team

UNICEF

Three United Nations Plaza, Room 1048 - New York, NY 10017, USA

Mobile/WhatsApp/Signal: +1 (646) 371-6319

E-mail: fbot...@unicef.org | https://www.unicef.org/disabilities

 

Documents which might be of interest:

Global Report on Assistive Technology, articles on childhood and assistive technology and digital AT, as well as our supplies page and the new Assistive Product Specifications for persons with disabilities from the WHO.

 

From: icoc...@googlegroups.com <icoc...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of manisha4aug
Sent: Saturday, November 12, 2022 12:30 PM
To: ICoCreAD <icoc...@googlegroups.com>

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[Will Wade]

Hi all

We are working on this topic of TTS generation and equally importantly TTS integration. This is as bigger problem right now. You can make voices (Nb. ML based approaches using things like coqui.ai (https://github.com/coqui-ai/TTS are open and far better quality than HTS / eSpeak voices) the problem is nothing can easily use them without building some custom Integration. 

In short if you are interrelated in making new languages or dialect TTS then drop us your details and watch this space. We plan on a open table with developers and AT professionals looking at the issue and how we fix this. 

W

	Will Wade Research & Development Manager Ace Centre Working Days: Mon to Thur         web:  acecentre.org.uk email:  ww...@acecentre.org.uk phone:  0800 080 3115 ext 207 address:  Hollinwood Business Centre, Albert Street, Oldham, OL8 3QL
Ace Centre is a registered charity no. 1089313. Registered Company Num: 04268143. VAT Num: 785728278.

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From: icoc...@googlegroups.com <icoc...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Fernando Botelho <fbot...@unicef.org>
Sent: Saturday, November 12, 2022 8:43:21 PM
To: manisha4aug <manis...@gmail.com>; ICoCreAD <icoc...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: [ICoCreAD] Re: NVIDYA alternative

 

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[Rune Thorsen]

Dear Muturaj,

is the INDO NVDA version open source?

Would you be interested in trying to write up on it on the page :
https://thorsen.it/ATPilot/archives/2549 ?

Could you go through the rating (IPPA & QUEST) with the person you
talked about using NVDA?

That would be great for making a useful casestory. What do you think?

Best

Rune