Session is in room Cairo/HongKong 10:00am
Presenters: Chan, West, Snider, Dias, Lay-Flurrie, Havlik.
Presentation1:
Takes pic of printed page, converts to digital text, reads aloud. For sight disabilites. Camera on the bottom for usability!
Instructions are read aloud for the sight-impaired. It can spell out loud! People in user trials really valued this. Also, can change voice speed.
The accent is a little frustrating because of the disjointed words. 350 wpm is way too fast to understand. It sounds deeply amusing. But, says the presenter, power users can understand at this speed, and get frustrated if it's too slow...
The reader can create content for you. You can read a handout at a conference with it! Hold camera steady, take pic. It flashed! Camera flash ftw. Can take pic at any rotation and read it in. Algorith,s can take care of that for you- tell which way is up for the letters.
Capture station! Gotta turn the pages for it manually, but it does do two pages at a time. Reader has ~4Gb of flash memory. This is to improve bulk capture- i.e. for school, etc.
Key market areas: self-empowering students create their own audio books. Import/export files to/from other assistive tech devices.
Presentation2:
Voice reader. First, a video of a reproduction of a trial of the software. First issue: legal questions. Private business don't have to comply, but they lose lawsuits when they don't. (Did I understand that right?)
The tool runs on the cloud and is accessed via browser. It uses Dragon Naturally Speaking. There is a short delay in transcription because it goes phrase by phrase through the algorithm to transcribe. This makes silly owrd typos less likely?
This past Tues, the 21st Century Telecom law was passed. It requires captioning. It's a historical point for the American Disability Association. having a human transcriber is expensive, so they're hoping to market the automated transcription to customers of this law.
Presentation3:
Braile Writing Tutor:
87% of blind ppl live in developing world (because of health tech ungood)
It's hard to learn to read while blind.
Braile isn't a language like ASL; there's a different version for every language. To write, you have a tablet, put a sheet of paper on it, and emboss it with a little sharp pen/stick.
Slate and stylus costs <$10 in most places. It's the standard for the next 30yr, basically. So we have to work with it. They worked with a variety of schools for the blind. Bid problem: delayed feedback. Teacher has to read, then talk... and in at least one place, it's too humid in the summer to use paper!
They can't afford textbooks, so teachers just speak. If you don't know Braille, can't read your notes...
Audio feedback, buttons for little kids with iffy motor skills, curricular modes, game modes... "Power is the biggest issues in a lot of these places." Solar? Next version will have lots of solutions...
Example: Animal game. "Please write the name of the animal that makes this sound."
It's evolved to be the thing game.
There's a game that teaches you what buttons to press to write the numbers.
There's a strong accent, so the customize the sound file everywhere they go. very important for kids to trust the voice, so they usually use the teacher's voice...
Work with teachers to create different games.
There is a Kiswahili mode!! It sounds very cool.
I took some pics of the thing itself! Posted later.
Presentation4:
"I'm a deaf girl demoiing stuff for people with visual impairments."
Day job at microsoft is to lead customer service support sales division. Night job is this!
She's a very good verbal speaker for being deaf! She says that Microsoft tries very hard to get diversity.
"I am no techie. I have a music degree, people."
Windows 7 accessibility!
He sat down w/ disability ppl after xp and vista. Rough crowd, disapproving. Windows 7 had a solid goal to fix that!!! "improved hard."
How quick and easy it is to check your Word doc or powerpoint before sending it out. We don't measure disabilites... it's self-identified!
"Did you hear that? I didn't. I'm a deaf girl and I apologize. I'm also British."
WIndowsbuttun-U called usability features. She shows off the zoom mode! Windows is making standards for zoom and captioning... learn the shortcuts!
She made a slide that's difficult to make accessable. Accessability helper tells her exactly how to add alternate text!
"I'm being told that you can;t hear me." (crowd giggles) "I like how captioning will put my interpreter out of work."
Links will be on the Wiki.
Questions
Q: for IBM. Verbal transcriptor.
Q: re Braille. have you seen movie [what is this name] with the machine that let him read braille mechanically?
A: I haven't seen it but I know the machine. Refreshable Braille machines are difficult to make cheaply because of the large # of moving parts. People are trying to make them better now, but no win yet. In the dev world, people now type Braille!
A: from IBM speech transcript- debate re born blind children. If they do braille, they can master higher learning! Physics, chemistry. There's concern that current devices can't... thing... (huh? I got lost in the answer.)
Q: re localization to Intel. Visually impaired colleagues that use muliple languages.
A; reader is in English and British (accent) lol. Multiple languages are "on the roadmap" it seems simple enough but it'll take time.
Q: cost of reader?
A; $1500 for reader. Capture station $400. Tried to price it as cheaper than current solutions, whcih are ~$2000 (and not mobile!) Cost is driven by volume and they hope that they'll sell enough to drive the price down.
Q: ...
oops out of time
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Note- who linked to this? There was a ridiculous spike in pageviews. I hope it was useful to you, whoever you are. :) Oct26,2010