Voice synthesizer for blind and visual impaired person

[Arthur Marsh]

Bartlomiej Zdanowski AutoGuard Ltd. wrote, On 27/03/07 17:53:
> Hi.
> I thought about voice synthesizer software to build in OpenMoko for 
> blind person. I know some blind people and currently they can only use 
> Nokia with Symbian and proper software. Does anyone have any experience 
> with voice synthesizer soft and can provide some info whether it can be 
> implemented on OpenMoko platform?
> There's so much to do for blind person and we can do it together so 
> think guys and please provide some solutions and thoughts.

Hi, a person I used to work for had a package called "Mobile 
Accessibility" on a Nokia (symbian os) handset.

The drawbacks included not being entirely stable, being expensive, the 
copy protection that meant it couldn't be moved from handset to handset 
without getting a new activation code from the supplier, and the lack of 
ability to customise things.

A large, high contrast display would help many vision impaired people, 
and a well-thought out spoken menu system with speech synthesis would 
help many low vision and completely blind people. The FIC 1973 does have 
the drawback of there being no tactile feedback for input via the 
screen. Does the hardware support the touch screen working if it were 
covered with a clear plastic screen with a raised grid pattern on it?

Regards,

Arthur.