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(TechnAbility Exchange - Tom Dekker)
Screen Readers - Speech And Braille Access To Graphical User Interfaces
(Revised May 20, 1999)
Screen readers provide a sophisticated system with which braille and speech users can access the complex screens on modern-day computers. In place of a mouse, these access tools provide a keyboard overlay for manipulating the environment.
Currently, the most widely-used screen reader would have to be JAWS (Job Access With Speech) For Windows. Aside from supporting the popular braille displays, this screen reader comes with a software speech synthesizer that can switch between five languages, more or less on the fly.
The JAWS User Community has also formed a very useful mailing list, complete with web site, where users create and archive JAWS configuration files for a wide range of popular applications.
Window-Eyes is another popular screen reader. It is less expensive than JAWS and does not yet support braille displays, but it is still a very reliable screen reader with a considerable and devoted following.
Artic WinVision from Artic Technologies is also fairly popular. One of its advantages is that it seems to work right out of the box with some applications where other screen readers require a considerable amount of configuration.
Of course, there are many other screen readers on the market, but the ones mentioned here are definitely the most widely used.
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© Copyright 1999
by Tom Dekker
Access Technology Consultant for the Blind and Reading Disabled
Houston, Texas, USA
Telephone: (281) 988-8982
Fax (pre-arranged only): (281) 530-1740
Email: Dekker@concentric.net