Re: [orca-list] Use of non-speech sounds for navigation...

[Jacob Schmude <j schmude gmail com>]

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Hi
In large part I agree with this. If done in the right places, and for
the right purposes, they can be useful. However having sounds for
everything would just make things more difficult. If anyone owns a Mac
or iPhone OS device, look at how those integrate sound effects into the
screen reader for what I consider as a useful approach. There are sound
effects for focus moved to control, next/previous line wrapped,
top/bottom boundary reached, etc. Granted Orca wouldn't need all of
these necesarily as the screen reading approaches are different, but
it's a good starting point imho.

On 05/28/2010 12:41 PM, Michael Whapples wrote:
> I have mixed views.
>
> The examples you give I feel the sounds would be useless. May be this is
> because I don't have any keys spoken other than locking keys (eg.
> numlock and capslock). Adding sounds in this case only increases time.
> At this point I can't think of any time orca tells me to press keys so
> sounds instead of keys, useless as only an increase in time.
>
> I can only think of two other cases of limited options where sounds
> could replace words. The one is to note controls, I think NVDA now does
> this on the web (eg. when you enter or leave a text box). The other may
> be to alert users to something about text (eg. subscript/superscript,
> bold/italic/underline, uppercase/lowercase, colour change, etc). Now
> this might improve the rate at which a user can use the system, but the
> user must learn what the sounds mean as there is no recognised standard
> and the sounds have no obvious meaning built in, and anyway I question
> if users would gain more speed by learning to listen to the speech faster.
>
> Thinking back to the controls one, I think it is quite useful to have
> something to note the event of "entered edit box" or "exited edit box"
> on the web. I think at the moment orca doesn't really make this clear.
>
> In short, it may be useful if done for the right reasons and done
> carefully in the right places. However miss that and it could be a waste
> of time.
>
> Michael Whapples
> On 01/-10/-28163 08:59 PM, Sasikumar (???/???) M wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > This is based on something I read in a journal. The paper claims that
> > using non-speech sounds for things like navigation makes screen
> > readers more friendly for the visually impaired. I think one advantage
> > is that these sounds (a screech for up arrow, a bell for the
> > enter-key, etc) are shorter and easier to comprehend than the full
> > word/phrase which will be used otherwise. Such sounds enable you to
> > overlay them along with normal speech, without spoiling the message.
> > Since my team at Mumbai is doing work on Orca, I wanted to know from
> > you -- particularly the visually impaired on this list -- as to your
> > thoughts on this idea.
> >
> > We can then formulate a set of proper and well coordinated sounds for
> > 5-10 navigational tasks, and implement them.
> >
> > - Sasi
>
>
>
>
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