Making Websites Easier to Read (or have read to you)

A number of options exist to decrease visual clutter on websites, which in turn makes it much easier to use a text-to-speech reader to read the website to you or simply to view the site without distractions or to customize how the site is seen for easier reading.

Online or Bookmarklet Options

• Readability
• All Text Paper
• Tidy Read
• Textise (makes site text only, does not allow formatting changes etc.)
  

Browser Add-Ons

• Tidy Read for Firefox
  
• Textise for Firefox (see above ntoe about Textise)
  
• Clean Page for IE
  

De-Clutter Specific Sites

• Quiet Tube for You Tube
• Easy You Tube

Also useful: Directions on Re-Formatting Websites for JAWS

Kindle 2 Might Have Applications in Our Classroom

The new Kindle 2 is much more likely to have a place in a classroom for learners with multiple or intensive disabilities with some of the changes that have been announced. The biggest news for our students is the new text-to-speech feature. The voices are not the state of the art ones most of us with Dynavox or similar device users are accustomed to hearing, but you can change the pitch. While I hardly see the Kindle 2 as an accessible device until the pages can be turned with a switch or two, the text-to-speech could be a selling point for some of our students.

So where is it? Where is the e-book reader that has a great voice and/or switch accessible page turning? Has anyone hacked a new or old kindle to make page turning switch accessible? Is Dynavox, Tobii ATI or PRC planning on adding some e-book accessibility to there devices anytime soon?

All in One Cell Phone includes TTS

Our wonderful classroom SLP came in talking about this story from NPR yesterday and informed me that I should blog about it. She couldn't remember the name of the device, its designer or anything other than the fact that it was on NPR and that the text-to-speech was used on a bag of coffee (which it was).

(Luckily she didn't hear my comment wondering when they would come out with an instant replay cellphone for older folks with memory troubles, but since she reads this blog I am sure I will pay for that comment later.)

Turns out Kurzweil and NFB have created the worlds smallest text to speech device and installed it onto a Nokia cell phone. Tres cool! Also tres expensive. See the NPR story below:


January 29, 2008

Technology - Cell Phone Reads to the Blind
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18504117


A new cell phone offers the smallest text-to-speech reading device ever
built, a device especially useful for people with impaired vision. The
phone and software come with a $2,000 price tag.

If you have normal vision and can read, there are thousands of things
you do every day without even thinking even about it, little problems
you solve with just a glance * like knowing which coffee bag in a
hotel is caffeinated or decaf.

James Gashel is blind, but he can get his caffeine fix with help from
his cell phone.

"All you have to do is snap a picture of the bag, and it tells you," he
says.

Gashel is showing off his new phone in a hotel ballroom filled with
people who have come to check it out. Many are holding white canes, and
there's a guide dog resting by the wall. Everyone listens to the small
silver phone as Gashel holds it a few inches above a green rectangle.

"Taking picture ... detecting orientation," a digitized voice from the
phone says. "Processing U.S. currency image, please wait * $20."

The phone is loaded up with software developed by the company Gashel
works for * K-NFB Reading Technology, a joint venture between Kurzweil
Technologies and the National Federation of the Blind.

Besides reading labels and telling a $20 from a $10, the phone can read
pages of printed text.

Reading machines have been around for decades * this company already
makes a hand-held device. But this reader is the smallest yet * just 4
ounces and a few inches long. And it's in a high-end Nokia phone with
features like an MP3 player, high-speed data connection and a GPS
navigation system.

That's appealing to people like Mike Hanson, from Minnesota. He uses a
desktop reading machine for all kinds of things, including books, mail
and bills.

"I'm a lawyer, so I'll use it to read material related to cases I'm
working on," Hanson says.

But he never wanted a handheld reader before; he saw it as just one
more gadget to lug around. This multifunctional cell phone, though, is a
different story.

"It's next on my list of technology items to seriously consider," he says.

How to Make Firefox Talk

Many of you have made the switch to Firefox by Mozilla as your web browser of choice for a variety of reasons. If so you may be looking for ways to make Firefox accessible to learners who are blind/low vision or who are low-level or non-readers.

Firefox offers an accessibility page which lists various solutions for users who are blind/low vision and whether or not the solutions are compatible. A free screen reader that is completely accessible is Fire Vox.

If your accessibility issue is more towards the low/no reading ability issue then CLiCk, Speak may be an option to make Firefox accesible for your students. CLiCk, Speak is a mouse driven program utilizing text-to-speech on demand in multiple language (thus also making it useful for ESL).