Re: [orca-list] open source screen reader that support Japanese language

[Christian Hofstader <cdh gnu org>]

I'm curious, has anyone done anything in the world of gnome accessibility involving supporting use of an IME 
(input method editor)? I went through this experience with Global IME (IBM) and another from Microsoft while 
I was still working at Freedom Scientific and, if someone want to work on such a project, I can add insight 
and help predict pitfalls in the project as we dealt with nearly every problem I can imagine one might 
encounter as we did JAWS in Japanese starting about a decade ago.

While IME accessibility is really hard, it is also a really interesting problem involving a UI to what is 
essentially a very visual concept dealing with a lot of homophones which are always problematic for screen 
readers as context, the way we humans process homophones in the real world, doesn't really exist in an IME so 
we need to do semantically interesting things to make the system usable without being overly cumbersome. Our 
friend Dr. Chieko Asakawa from IBM Japan understands this problem better than anyone and would probably help 
us out if asked.

The other really hard problem with Japanese deals with making a segmenter to determine word boundaries in a 
writing system without white space. I understand this really well as I've done such three times in my career 
and would love to work on yet another screen reader segmentation system if someone else wants to lead the 
task.

Japanese is probably the most difficult language for screen readers so, if we can get a Japanese problem 
solved, Hebrew, Arabic and others will be able to use the same code to deal with their very similar problems.

cdh
    
On Dec 9, 2010, at 9:28 AM, Dmitri (Jim) Smirnoff wrote:

> Good day,
>
> I am looking for the open source screen reader that support Japanese language and speech engine. Please 
> advise.
>
> Thank you
>
> Dmitri
> _______________________________________________
> orca-list mailing list
> orca-list gnome org
> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list
> 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
> Netiquette Guidelines are at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions/NetiquetteGuidelines
> Log bugs and feature requests at http://bugzilla.gnome.org
> Find out how to help at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/HowCanIHelp