Web based symbol communication system with scanning
Steve Lee
> The following content has been submitted for approval: The Web Page Communicator Templates are a set of Internet Explorer compatible web pages that are used to create web pages that behave similarly to dynamic display speech generating devices. Now many platforms capable of running Internet Explorer 4.0 or newer can be used as simple communications devices. The pages support multiple access methods including single switch and two switch scanning, linear or row-column scans, and auditory scanning. formEdit is a template editor that makes it easy to build a useful communications page using the Web Page Communicator templates. The current template set offers choice grids with 4 to > 24 cells.
http://www.oatsoft.org/Software/formedit-and-the-web-page-communicator-templates
Jim, thank you very much for submitting this to Oatsoft.org.
Did you create this software? If not could you pass this on as I
cannot locate in via Google. Could you also provide web site, source
code and license details using the OATSoft features?
The reason I am contacting you directly and cross posting is that this
is *very*interesting to me and a number of others who want to improve
alt access and communication.
I am interested in this as a significant part of the next phase of the
Jambu project which I have been working on (and off) with Mozilla
Funding and Chris Hoffman is looking at web On Screen Keyboards. There
is significant overlap between all our work.
As you say there is great potential so the big question is why limit
it to IE only? That is a serious problem AFAIAC, especially for mobile
devices. Why is that and is it a strong dependency? I can only guess
you might be using ActiveX for input, as scanning with the simple DOM
events is a little tricky. Or perhaps SAPI (we could look at how
FireVox does it).
In terms of technologies Chris is looking at using JQuery and I
require SVG symbols/cells, even more so as I am working on a
so-to-be-released Open Symbol Set that will be available in SVG. I was
thinking about using a Firefox extension or XULRunner, but as much as
possible should be open and cross-everything and use the latest web
accessibility standards. I think ARIA will become important as the
functionality grows from simple features to some of the advance stuff
done by local apps like the Grid etc.
It might be that access to platform features outside the browser web
sandbox are best dealt with by creating a small cross-platform AT that
communicates with the web app via ARIA and the platform API (that
makes Dojo attractive as it has ARIA now).
This is great timing and I look forward to hearing more and opening
the debate to how we could collaborate and develop along the lines you
mention on the page work and make it cross browser, cross platform
and use open standards. I'm starting to think about the roadmap for
the next phase and to secure funding. Perhaps you would like to join
the Jambu Group to discuss this in detail with others who are
interested in this area (low traffic). It doesn't mean you're
committed to Jambu, it's just a good place to discuss the subject.
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/jambu
--
Steve Lee
--
Open Source Assistive Technology Software
web: fullmeasure.co.uk
blog: eduspaces.net/stevelee/weblog
> Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2008 07:38:48 +0100
>
> This was submitted by Jim Luther ( jam...@hotmail.com ).
>
> Please click the link below and review this content.
> http://www.oatsoft.org/Software/formedit-and-the-web-page-communicator-templates
>
> If you reject something, please add comments, via the 'advanced' option under the 'state' button.
>
> Thanks.
> (sent by the OATS website robot - do not reply to this message)
>
Steve Lee
Hope you don't mind my copying this to the Jambu List, it would be
good to keep the discussion going there.
> Oatsoft is really the best place for it.
Excellent. Simon said you were working with him on getting it up there.
> The Web Page Communicator really only works best as an offline browsing experience from local memory to achieve acceptable performance when doing things like auditory scanning and linking to new pages.
but it's a start ;-)
> The pages (at this point) work strictly with Internet Explorer 4.0+ only. This work I consider as still in an early stage, but potentially useful. I think the concept is sound and should be translatable to all the major browsers, and potentially to very low cost platforms as well.
great, I'm sure it could
> I can email you the package if you want.
Please, or even better, do feel free to post it to the Jambu group as a file
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/jambu
You will probably need to join first.
Or perhaps you will get it up on OATSoft in a few days?
> All the programming is in the web page manipulating the DOM using javascript. IE was chosen for the reason that I am already familiar with its peculiar methods for addressing the DOM,
That's good. I'm sure that could be changed to one of the standard DOM
levels that all browsers support.
> and becuase of the IE only, easy to use, background sound tag which plays a sound as soon as you identify (or change) the sound file URL, providing on-the-fly sound file addressing, instant response (with local memory browsing), and no pre-loading. I hope to acheve similar results in Opera, Mozilla, Safari, and whatever Sony and a lot of cell phones use.
I'm sure that could be done, and there must be examples or people who
know how to do that.