AS2 and screen readers

[leiafee]

Does ACTIVStudio 2 work with screen readers?

Has anyone used it this way?

I'm particularly interested in knowing if the handwriting to text function will work with it.

[airskeeter]

Leia,

I am interested to know what a screen reader does...

Thanks,

Bill

[Danny Nicholson]

It allows blind or partially sighted people to have the computer screen read to them in a synthesised voice.

A lot of the recent accessibility guidelines for websites have been to allow things like screenreaders to read them aloud.

I don't have access to screenreader software to see how it copes with ActivStudio files....

[airskeeter]

Thanks Danny.

I would be interested in knowing....

[Westlake]

ReadPlease 2003 text-to-speech software - free download at http://www.readplease.com/
Paste your text into the Reader, choose the voice, speed and Font Size. The text could be extracted from a textbox in a Flipchart page...
There is a webpage reader too but that isn't free,
Don't forget the text-to-speech toolbar in Excel too. Options to read down a column or across a row of cells. Mind you, Microsoft Sam's voice can be a bit irritating!
Hilary

[J Boucke]

Westlake,

How does this software differ from the software on Windows that reads text? I haven't used it myself, but found it when I was recording voiceover .wav files to be used with my flipcharts.

[leiafee]

So far my experimenting has produced the following...

Windows' built-in Narrator software is not suitableas it reads typed characters one by one instead of as a whole word.

The other text to speech package I've tried, Coolspeech, will recognise and read text typed in using the text tool or onscreen keyboard but not converted handwritten text.

It's a bit of a shame as that would very useful.

There is a slightly messy workaround which uses the fact that the screenreader can read text copied to the clipboard. A few extra clicks after inputting the text but it might be workable.

I haven't tried the ReadPlease that Westlake posted yet.