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                            THE BLIND NEWS DIGEST

                                 Issue # 917

                            Friday, May 14, 1993

Today's Topics:


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                     Which synthesizer should I choose?
                                RFB Gold Mine
                         Why not visually oriented?
                          CD-Rom and Screen Readers
                    laptops, macs, outspoken and telnet?
                              Re: scanner info
                   Re: Which synthesizer should I choose?
                           RFB Catalogues online:
                   Re: Which synthesizer should I choose?
                              Re: RFB Gold Mine
                        Microsoft and screen readers
                       Up-date on RFB on-line catalog
               Blind student needs French > English dictionary


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                              Bill McGarry (Moderator)
                              (203) 337-1518



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Subject: Which synthesizer should I choose?
From: bunt0003@student.tc.umn.edu (Monthian Buntan-1)

Hi folks,
I'm a Mac user myself and therefore have no experience in
the PC market.  Recently I was asked to help purchase two
external speech synthesizers with software for a
blind school in Thailand.  They prefer the one which
does not require any sound card in the computer itself.
Anybody has suggestions on this matter?
Btw, they can pay for $1500 for two
synthesizers.

Thanks in advance.

Regards,

Thian.




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Subject: RFB Gold Mine
From: RBANKS@UWSTOUT.EDU (Dick Banks)

[Note from Bill McGarry: This is from the AXSLIB mailing list.]

Hello Everybody

Excuse my being absent from posting more of the Top Ten that I wrote
about, but the semester is winding down here and I have just been
swamped.  I will get to number two fo the questions that I was ask at
the conference in a few days.  I just had to post this because I was
just made aware of it.  I didn't spend a lot of time checking it out,
but enough that I wanted you all to know.

RFB holdings can be searched online ow.  Not only that, but feature
this.  You can even order online.  I couldn't believe it.  Now pardon me
if I am too excited, but for me, this is big time stuff.  I will let you
discover just how you can search, but wow,  you can do it many ways.

From your systems prompt

telnet r2d2.jvnc.net


At the login type gopher

press return to emulate a vt100

choose number 7 (I forget what it is}

Number one for RFB

Take it from there.

I did have a little difficulty doint a search.  I finally was successful
though.  The help facility is not to hot, but what a neat place.  I was
like a kid in a candy store.

In case you knew about this already. WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME. (s)

Drop me a prsonal note if you liked what you saw.  Oh yeah, how to
register with RFB and their policies are all there too.  I think that
librarians can sign for students who qualigy if I remember correctly.

You will have to excuse me, I am going to catch a GOPHER.

Best wishes

Dick Banks                                  A            T T T T T T
Adaptive Technologist                     A   A               T
library Learning Center                 A A A AA              T
University of Wisconsin-Stout         A         A             T
AXSLIB-L Moderator                  A            A            T
(library access discussion list)
rbanks@uwstout.edu  INTERNET     rbanks@uwstout  BITNET
Turning on the light of empowerment through access to ALL Libraries

Dick




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Subject: Why not visually oriented?
From: VCOOK%VTVM2.BITNET@VM1.NoDak.EDU (Virgil Cook)


I get paid to see that my students use the English language
properly.  This business of political correctness has gotten
completely out of hand.  "visually challenged," "differently
abled," "sightless," "visually oriented"--all such terms seem to
stem from the notion that "blind" and "deaf" are chauvinistic
terms like "nigger," "jig," and "coon."  These innocuous,
imprecise, misleading terms cloud the meaning of what people are
trying to say.  Certainly "disabled" has problems, but "people
with disabilities" does not.  I am blind; I am not visually
challenged; I have no vision to challenge.  To say that I am
disabled is a bald-faced lie, but to say that I have a disability
is to describe a condition that I have lived with for 58 years.
I am blind; I cannot see.  I have, however, learned to cope with
that disability,  obtained a good education, and engaged in a
very satisfying profession for three decades.  There are precise
terms that have been around for years to describe circumstances
that most who read this have learned to live with and compensate
for.  If you are blind, you can't see at all.  If you are
visually impaired, you have some sight--I refuse to get into the
definition of "legally blind."  If you are deaf, you can't hear
anything; if you are hard of hearing, you have some usable
hearing.

Let's stop encouraging the misguided do-gooders who would hide
reality behind there slippery euphemisms.

By the way, I guess that I'm not getting old, I'm getting
chronologically advantaged.


                                ******
***
| Virgil A. Cook                   VOICE  703-231-6568                  |
| DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH            FAX    703-231-5692                  |
| Virginia Tech                     E-MAIL-                             |
| Williams Hall                        Internet: VCOOK@VTVM2.CC.VT.EDU  |
| BLACKSBURG, VA  24061-0112           BITNET: VCOOK@VTVM2.BITNET       |

                                ******
***




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Subject: CD-Rom and Screen Readers
From: nmlrc@uwpg02.uwinnipeg.ca
Organization: University of Winnipeg

I was interested to read that Dennis Brown uses a screen reader with
his CD-Rom.  I run a resource centre and have a CD-Rom set up with JAWS
and they refuse to work together. (no I am not personalizing this!)  I
am beginning to suspect that it is because of the the computer I am
using rather then the software.  I have the CD-Rom on an old 8086 with
5MZ.  Does anyone out there have any suggestions, I am willing to switch
computers and would really like to see this program up and running.
Miriam




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Subject: laptops, macs, outspoken and telnet?
From: pjr@tidal.princeton.edu (Peter Rayner)
Organization: Princeton University

This article is a bit long, sorry for the background, the questions
are at the end.

Well it has come time to replace my Toshiba laptop after four + years of
unspeakable abuse.  The keyboard is getting unusably soft and the
letters are starting to repeat.  Strangely enough the worst offenders
are those associated with reading netnews!  Wonder why?

Here's the deal.  I'm using Artic Business Vision 3.03 with a
Symphonix 225 internal card.  Despite all the rude things people say
about it I find the combination pretty usable.  So I'm vaguely
interested in protecting the investment in the 225.  People have
already discussed recently just what this will mean in terms of
limiting my choice.  Given that I've been delighted with the
ruggedness of the Toshiba (it's been my  only keyboard through these
four years of 10-14 hours/day hard use) I could live with this but ...

The kind folks at work have suggested they might consider buying me a
machine given that I'm the only one without a workstation on my desk.
All fine and good but it has to be a Mac since that's what they use
when they're not using Suns etc.

Phew!  Now for the questions.  Outspoken from Berkeley Systems has
been around a while now.    It's very attractive since it uses the
on-board hardware, thus making it cheap.  But has anyone tried it on
one of the portable Macs yet?  Also any machine I buy will spend 95%
of its life as a terminal, in fact I already know the program it would
be running, NCSA telnet.  Does anyone have any experience running
this hardware/software combination in a programming/research
environment?

Thanks in advance for any help
--
Peter Rayner Program in Oceanic           | "All right, I retract, the
and Atmospheric Sciences Princeton        | Honourable Member does *not* have
University                                | the brains of a monkey." F.Daly




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Subject: Re: scanner info
From: dperez@eis.calstate.edu (Rusty Perez)
Organization: Calif State Univ/Electronic Information Services

Ok! now we have several more screen readers which, by the looks of
things, cost roughly double <double> what the DOS readers cost.
Most of them aren't even ready for consumer purchase. We've even
got one company who charges for a demo! Should we as blind users,
bound to the use of speech software, subject to the greed of the
manufacturors, put up with this?  Yes, you can blow an entire SSI
check or several days pay on the stuff, or you can refuse to by the
products. Yes, it's nice to be able to use the graphical
interfaces, but many of the dos applications are copiable, cheeper,
and we've even got a shareware product out there. I advocate a
boycott on the new readers for windows applications. Visual windows
applications are, in many cases, cheaper than their dos
equivelants! Let's tip the greedy hands of these producers of
adaptive technology.  Will you join with me?


--
I refuse to disclaim anything!
Anything and everything I say is a product of  everything and everyone I
have ever been  associated with
David (Rusty) Perez (dperez@eis.calstate.edu)
. "Oh wind, if winter comes, can spring be far
behind?" -- Shelley




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Subject: Re: Which synthesizer should I choose?
From: janina@netcom.com (Janina Sajka)
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)

I would get two Lite Talks and have either asap or Flipper 4.0 as
my software.  That would make excellent use of your $1,500.

PS:  Lite Talk is available in several incarnations.  It's the outboard
version of the Doubletalk PC.





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Subject: RFB Catalogues online:
From: raman@cs.cornell.EDU (T. V. Raman)
Organization: Cornell Univ. CS Dept, Ithaca NY 14853


This is of interest to members of RFB == Recordings for the Blind:

I tried posting this last night, but since it has not yet shown up, I
guess there was some kind of gliche.  So here we go again:



Hi!

I discovered the following during the last 24 hours.

1) RFB's Catalogues are now online and are searchable over the
   internet.
(RFB = Recordings for the Blind)
The database is a wais based system)
To get to the catalogue,  you can:

1) gopher  r2d2.jvnc.net 70
(Connect to the gopher server running on jvnc.net, the jvncnet gopher)


If you do not have access to gopher, you can get to the same stage by

telnet r2d2.jvnc.net  and login as gopher.

Select the item Online publishers, and under it you'll find RFB.

The RFB catalogues are reached by gopher actually opening a telnet
connection to
r2d2.jvnc.net  4445
that's port 4445 on r2d2.jvnc.net)

so you can bypass the gopher step altogether and just telnet directly.


The RFB catalogues are really user friendly, and what's the most
thrilling bit, you can order books online. Give it a try, you'll
really like it.

I also found out through another mailing list about the Library of
Congress Online Catalogue:

telnet locis.loc.gov

This is a fairly unfriendly system with a very ugly user interface,
and is completely non-intuitive. To get good at it, you'll probably
need to spend some time, it seems to have been designed for use by
people who only search library materials:-
but under there you'll find the entire Library of Congress Braille and
Audio catalogue for searching.
This system does not permit online ordering, and it's quite difficult
to force the search to locate waht you're looking for.

Three cheers to RFB,

and

Thanks to the LOC for setting up their pilot project,

(and hoping it gets better)
--Raman
--
   T. V. Raman <raman@cs.cornell.edu>Tel: (607)255-9202  R 272-3649
                       Office: 4116 Upson Hall,
Department of Computer Science, Cornell University Ithaca NY 14853-6201
                Res: 226 Bryant Avenue Ithaca NY 14850




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Subject: Re: Which synthesizer should I choose?
From: mikef@pacifier.rain.com (Mike Freeman)
Organization: Pacifier BBS

In article <29082@handicap.news> bunt0003@student.tc.umn.edu
(Monthian Buntan-1) writes:
>Index Number: 29082
>
>Hi folks,
>I'm a Mac user myself and therefore have no experience in
>the PC market.  Recently I was asked to help purchase two
>external speech synthesizers with software for a
>blind school in Thailand.  They prefer the one which
>does not require any sound card in the computer itself.
>Anybody has suggestions on this matter?
>Btw, they can pay for $1500 for two
>synthesizers.
>
In some ways, it's tough to answer this question adequately.
Which speech synthesizer is best is one of those questions
that, like which matress one prefers, is answered by saying
"it's the one you like best."

However, given your price specification, I would seriously consider
the Double-talk family of synthesizers.  They run around $300
to $350 apiece, I believe (sorry, don't have their address/Ma Bell
in front of me -- undoubtedly someone else does).

Good luck.
--
Mike Freeman            |       Amateur Radio Callsign: K7UIJ
301 N.E. 107th Street   |       Internet: mikef@pacifier.rain.com
Vancouver, WA 98685 USA |       GEnie: M.FREEMAN11
Telephone (206)574-8221 |       Pushing 40 is exercise enough!




------



Subject: Re: RFB Gold Mine
From: mikef@pacifier.rain.com (Mike Freeman)
Organization: Pacifier BBS

In article <29083@handicap.news> RBANKS@UWSTOUT.EDU (Dick Banks) writes:
>Index Number: 29083
>
>You will have to excuse me, I am going to catch a GOPHER.
>
As far as gophers go, I like the ones that poke their little
heads out of holes at arcades and which you bang back into their
domeciles with a hammer!  (Sorry ... just couldn't resist!).
--
Mike Freeman            |       Amateur Radio Callsign: K7UIJ
301 N.E. 107th Street   |       Internet: mikef@pacifier.rain.com
Vancouver, WA 98685 USA |       GEnie: M.FREEMAN11
Telephone (206)574-8221 |       Pushing 40 is exercise enough!




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Subject: Microsoft and screen readers
From: greglo@MICROSOFT.COM (Greg Lowney)

[Note from Bill McGarry -- this is from the Blind-L mailing list.
 I have changed the subject line from the original.]

In response to Martin McCormick's message:

|I think that there will never really be much competition in the
|screen reading business because the market is just not large enough.  To
|make things start to happen, companies like Microsoft should design their
|operating systems so that it is relatively simple to design the special
|access software.  The argument about stiffling competition is a bit weak
|because there isn't really any.
|
|        A well-designed patch or hook into the system would allow more people
|to get in to the action.  Right now, those who know enough about the Windows
|environment to really make a difference are busy doing other things.
|

Microsoft is working with over half a dozen companies working on screen
readers for Windows.  One is currently available, three more have been
publicly announced for imminent availability.  In addition, companies such
as Berkeley Systems are producing toolkits designed to make it easy to
develop GUI screen readers.  Microsoft provides information to all these
companies to aid them in their development process, amounting to "hooks"
for their use.  We are adding a set of hooks into Windows NT to support
such products, because the mechanisms that some of these companies use
will not work in a secure environment.  Whether we port those same
interfaces to Windows on MS-DOS is undecided.

    Greg




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Subject: Up-date on RFB on-line catalog
From: SLNOBL01@ULKYVM.LOUISVILLE.EDU (Stephen Noble)

University of Louisville, University Libraries
PHONE: 502-588-5659

There are a few things I need to relate to the list about the
present state of the Recording for the Blind on-line catalog at the
jvnc gopher site.  As I mentioned before, it is in an experimental
stage.  After about three hours on the phone yesterday to several
of my comrades at our Princeton Head Quarters, and representatives
of GES (formerly JvNcNET), I found out that it was not even as far
along as I thought it was SUPPOSED to be by now.  It has been
running for several months, but we ran into hardware/software
problems in sending updates to the catalog, so the system is not up
to date.  You will still have to use the 1-800 number to be sure to
get the most recent book availability information.  Our official
pretest of the system is scheduled for June 1, so I hope we get the
up-dating system back on track by then--I cannot, however,
guarantee that will be the case.  Also, I learned that we still
have a problem with the mail routing system that is supposed to
send the automatic book orders that the system generates directly
to RFB.  I would like to request that orders not be placed over
the system at this time (sorry!!).  I have received reasonable
assurance from GES that they will fix the problem soon,
perhaps as early as next week.  I will send out a note just as soon
as this feature is working.  Orders that have already been placed
should be held, but may be very delayed in being processed.
I suggest that you phone in orders through our 1-800 number until
I tell you that the system is working properly.  Sorry if this is
a little come down after the big news, but please bear with us.
Other announcements about the catalog and other services will
be coming soon.

As I have said before, please consider me as your network contact for RFB.
I will act upon all suggestions and feedback I receive from the list, so
feel free to send things my way.

Steve Noble
Recording for the Blind--Kentucky Unit
Head, RFB National Network Communications Task Force
Project Member, EDUCOM Project EASI
Assistant Moderator, AXSLIB-L
slnobl01@ulkyvm.louisville.edu    (BITNET: SLNOBL01@ULKYVM)
Phone: 502-588-5659




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Subject: Blind student needs French > English dictionary
From: philipf@ariel.ucs.unimelb.EDU.AU (Philip Feldman)
Organization: University of Melbourne



I am posting this message for a totally blind Arts/Law student at
The University of Melbourne who is studying French and needs help on
a number of questions:

1.    Does anyone know a decent French - English dictionary program
      with lots of usage examples. It would be nice if it is public
      domain/ shareware but all advice would be welcome. Something
      of this sort MUST be available from Canada or France.

2.    I know he has another hurdle in getting a voice synthesiser
      hardware and program that can handle French as well as English
      accents; but I am dealing with that as a separate question
      addressed to other groups. But if you have an answer to the
      synthesiser problem that would be great.

3.    If you know internet names and addresses of people involved in
      developing hardware/ software in this or related fields,
      please let me know. I would also appreciate contact from
      visually impaired people reading this group, who can help with
      advice.

Apologies if this is an inappropriate group. I am also posting to
misc.handicap. Other suggestions would be welcome.

Philipf@ariel.its.unimelb.edu.au






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                 End of Issue # 917 of the Blind News Digest

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