OT: RE: Augury and reading chicken bones for profit...(was Pun-ditry...)

[John Esak]

> Although apparently no one here picked up on Bill Vermillion's promotion
> of the Gentoo Linux BSD-like packaging system a quick look there shows a
> number of easily installable screen readers.
>
> http://packages.gentoo.org/packages/?category=app-accessibility

I did... and when I went to blindprogramming.com and asked a few questions
about the best of these to try. The responses I got was that none of them
were quite ready for prime time yet. The only screen readers that work
correctly MOST of the time are JAWS and WINDOW EYES... no linux editions
yet... or even being considered in the offing.

However, I may try some of what is listed there anyway.

For anyone who is interested... screen reading is accomplished by parsing
through the structure of what is on the screen and translating it into a
sythisizied verbal language. In the case of Windows, the more care given to
writing the app with GAP of design, the better it works. Microsoft, of
course, is able to design their apps with the most perfect adherence to
their window hierarchy and therefore their apps are the most accessible. The
real fall down is on screen reading the web. Can you imagine trying to do
this... when all there is to go by is the underlying html code?  People put
up sites that have no adherence to _any_ good web page design principles...
therefore they are unreadable. The percentage of accessible pages is getting
higher, but not skyrocketing up there. Only the very big sites are cognizant
of the needs of many users. So, in this regard any Linux-based screen reader
is going to be as bad as any Windows based one.  Since people can write some
really bad html code if they want to, not to mention some _really_ bad CSS
stuff... and large parts of the web remain invisible to the unsighted.

Still, getting the major apps right should be a piece of cake for any screen
reader. However, even giant companies like Intuit refuse to cooperate...
their Quicken product is universally thought to be the worst app out there
by most blind people. Intuit refuses to help either of the major screen
reader companies by providing information that would be useful... they feel
it is too proprietary. Blech, and you Linux guys hate Microsoft for this
kind of thing... you should try talking to Intuit sometime. Hitlerian comes
to mind.

John