Re: Orca outputCharAttributes is speech only?

[Jan and Bertil Smark Nilsson <jbsn aapt net au>]

Greetings,

On Mon, 18 Sep 2006, Peter Korn wrote:

> This thought came to me remembering our old outSPOKEN for Windows work,
> where a customer/programmer built a Braille output layer designed for a
> Braille-only user.  This programmer, working with our user-expert Josh
> Miele, did a number of innovative things in Braille including using
> non-Braille dot patterns to indicate buttons and checkboxes (dots 123478
> for a "left bracket" and dots 145678 for a "right bracket"), as part
> making a Braille-focused/only screen reader.
>
> So, I toss it out for the Orca user/experts on this list to consider.
> With all of the work on Personas for Orca, perhaps a deaf-blind persona
> might be a useful use case to design for.  Output for such a user might
> also be attractive for a "Braille-heavy" user or not; I dunno.


I still use Outspoken for Windows, which means that I can't use Windows 
XP - something which doesn't necessarily fill me with despair. I've 
thought good thoughts about Peter Korn over the years because of your 
initiative with this excellent screenreader.

When Alva took over OSW, they added a nice feature which, temporarily, 
makes the focus jump to a position on the screen, where a change is 
taking place - such as on a spreadsheet when you go to another cell.

I only use braille, not because I'm deaf but because I find speech 
intrusive. Moreover, were I to use speech on a regular basis, it would 
send my wife climbing up the wall. A solution where speech could be turned 
off and on easily would, in my opinion, be ideal.

I haven't yet managed to get Orca up and running but I'm close. It 
compiled, finally, without complaining, on my Debian Etch system. I'm 
hopeful that it will work later today - there seems to be some problem 
with Pyorbit.

Regards,

Bertil Smark Nilsson