Re: [orca-list] orca general audio support (sound icons, etc)

["ashley" <ash cox talktalk net>]

the voiceover on the mac sounds are quite good.
ash
Personal website:
www.ashleycox.co.uk
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Rui Batista" <ruiandrebatista gmail com>
To: <orca-list gnome org>
Sent: Tuesday, September 01, 2009 4:05 PM
Subject: [orca-list] orca general audio support (sound icons, etc)


> Hi all,
>
> My name is Rui Batista and I'm from Portugal (some of you may already
> know me from this and other lists).
> Now, due to an university course I'm taking (my university is Instituto
> Superior TÃcnico here in Lisbon) I can work more seriously in orca, in
> particular I'm taking the opportunity to develop orca general audio
> support and based on this, use sound (sometimes they call it sound icons
> and things like that) to improve the user experience in orca.
>
> There are already some screen readers using sounds to provide
> information to users, cases are NVDA, JAWS (MSN messenger script for
> example) and emacspeak. I'd like to know what use cases of sounds you
> like in other screen readers, what do you would like to have implemented
> in orca related to sound, what new great ideas you have no one add
> implemented yet in other screen reader but you think will be great for
> orca?
> Here are some ideas I collected for now:
>
> === Beep on Progress bar Updates ===
>
> * Description: on progress bar updates, inform the user of the relative
> percentage using beeps of various frequencies.
> * Details: One great idea implemented in the nVDA screen reader is the
> beep on progress bar updates functionality. When the current application
> as a progress bar control and that control changes the value NVDA beeps
> informing the user of the completed percentage on the progress bar.
> Higher the beep frequency, higher the progress bar value. This is really
> useful when copying or downloading files, installing packages, etc.
>
> === Provide Mouse Localization using Sound ===
>
> * Description: when the user moves the mouse, provide mouse
> localization in screen using sound.
> * Details: The current mouse review feature in orca provides a way to
> inform the user of the object under the mouse pointer. Using sound, it
> is also possible to inform the location of the object on screen using
> pan (stereo) and pitch, pan provides the horizontal coordinate and pitch
> the vertical one. For example, if the user moves the mouse to the screen
> top left corner, orca plays a high pitch beep on the left speaker, on
> the bottom right corner it plays a low frequency beep on the right
> speaker. This feature is also present on the NVDA screen reader.
>
> === Audio cues when Crossing line boundaries ===
>
> * Description: When in flat review, when navigating a text area, and in
> "say all", Orca should provide an option to present an audio cue to the
> user when they cross line boundaries.
> * Details: I don't recall if I saw this feature on emacspeak but it
> seems really interesting from an usability standpoint
>    * Notes: bug #354474 filled on
> http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=354474
>
> === Report miss-spelled Words using Sound ===
>
>    * Description: use a sound icon to report miss-spelled words instead
> of using speech
>    * Details: Currently in firefox for example, miss-spelled words are
> reported using speech (the synth inform the user "miss-spelled word").
> Using a sound icon the user can be informed of the mistake without
> interrupting the normal text flow. This must be synchronized with the
> speech flow.
>
> === Sound on bodytyping in pidgin ===
>
>    * Description: When a body is typing in pdigin (or some other IM
> client) inform this fact using sound instead of saying "body is typing"
>    * Details: This is a feature heavily used by the JAWS screen reader
> users and seems good from an usability perspective.
>
>
> === Audio support configuration ===
>
> * Description: The user should be able to configure audio support in
> orca
> * Details: some users don't like sounds going around, some other pref
> ere them to play lower, some must turn the off on some occasions. There
> must be a way to turn sounds off, control there overall volume, possibly
> change the sound card where they are played, Etc. There must be also a
> good default configuration for most users, for example use gnome
> settings for Te sound card output.
>
>
> And there are really many more good ways to use sound, I know you all
> must have things to say :)
>
> I created a page to talk about audio support in orca:
>
> HTTP://live.gnome.org/Orca/audio
>
> For now it is just a draft, I'm asking here for contributions so I can
> gather a good base and organize the information there.
>
> With your feedback I plan to write the requirements (mor or less
> formally), designing  and then start coding.
>
> For the tech people here this will be implemented using the gstreamer
> multimedia framework.
>
> With kind regards,
>
> Rui Batista
>
>
> Rui Batista
> E-mail/googletalk: ruiandrebatista (at) gmail (dot) com
> MSN/WLM: ruiandrebatista (at) hotmail (dot) com (don't send mail to this
> on)
> Skype: ruiandrebatista
> twitter: http://twitter.com/ragb
> weblog: http://outputstream.wordpress.com
>
> _______________________________________________
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> Visit http://live.gnome.org/Orca for more information on Orca.
> The manual is at
> http://library.gnome.org/users/gnome-access-guide/nightly/ats-2.html
> The FAQ is at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions
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> http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions/NetiquetteGuidelines


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