[gui-talk] Fwd: A COMPARATIVE REVIEW OF FOUR SCREEN-ACCESS PRODUCTS

[Steve Pattison]

From: John Rae thepenguin at rogers.com
To: aebc at blindcanadians.ca

A COMPARATIVE REVIEW OF FOUR SCREEN-ACCESS PRODUCTS
by Josh Kennedy
Braille Forum July 2008

When most people think of screen readers, the first thing that may come 
to
mind is JAWS, Window-Eyes, or Hal. While these are good screen access
products, they may not be suitable for everyone. In this article, I will
review four lesser-known free or low-cost products.

JAWS, Window-Eyes and Hal, while very powerful and extremely 
configurable,
are also very pricy, ranging in price from $800 to over $1,000. They are
often purchased through government agencies for their blind clients, and
they are also purchased in bulk for use in organizations, workplaces,
schools, and some libraries. But what if you don't have the money to buy 
a
screen reader such as JAWS? What if you're unemployed and you can't 
justify
the need for one of those three screen readers? You bought a computer
because computers these days cost anywhere from $400 to $800 for a 
decent
desktop or laptop computer. But, since you're blind, you still need that
thousand-dollar screen reader plus the SMAs to keep it up-to-date, 
right?

Not necessarily. This is where Thunder, NVDA, System Access, and the 
newly
released beta System Access To Go can help you.

Thunder

Thunder is a free screen reader created by the screenreader.net company. 
It
works with Windows XP Home, XP Pro, and Vista. It has a talking 
installer
which, when launched, installs Thunder with little or no intervention by 
the
user. Thunder works with popular applications such as Microsoft Word, 
Excel,
Outlook, calculator, the Windows XP desktop, basic PowerPoint support, 
media
player, and possibly more. Thunder lets you control the physical mouse,
simulating it with keys on the number pad. The only disadvantage to the
mouse simulation is there is no button for right-clicking, but there is 
one
for left-clicking. You can also make Thunder play musical tones to help 
you
get oriented to the screen. Thunder can read tables in Word, the titles 
of
windows, the status lines of some applications and more. You can also 
set
marks, kind of like virtual windows, if you want to read certain areas 
of
the screen frequently. Thunder is updated once every three to four 
months.

You can write
scripts for Thunder to work better with applications if you can obtain 
the
Visual Basic development environment and learn VB-Script. Scripts can 
also
be written in Notepad.

Some people have complained that Thunder crashes often on their machines 
and
is not very stable. I would give Thunder a 3 out of 5 rating. Thunder 
works
reasonably well with the applications it has been scripted for, but 
don't
count on making major changes to Thunder because the source code is not
available. Obtaining the Visual Basic integrated development environment 
may
be difficult for some people to do.

There is also a Thunder Pro version which allows you to have a little 
more
functionality such as telling the font and formatting styles in Word. 
You
can also buy more natural-sounding voices for Thunder for $49 each from
www.screenreader.net and www.screenreader.co.uk. You may also purchase a
special version of Thunder pre-installed onto a USB thumb drive for 
about
$300.

Nonvisual Desktop Access

Nonvisual Desktop Access (NVDA) was created by Michael Curran in 
December of
2006. He created his own screen reader because he was tired of paying 
for
upgrades to his traditional screen reader. NVDA is both free and
open-source. It is written in Python, a programming language recommended 
for
beginners or for non-programmers to start out with. NVDA is registered 
under
the new general public license, which states that the program and its 
source
code may be obtained and modified, but that all changes to the source 
code
must be made known to the developers.

As of version 0.5, NVDA comes with a talking installer. You can choose 
to
use the talking installer, which loads a temporary copy of NVDA, 
allowing
you to install NVDA without any sighted assistance. You may also opt to
install using an existing screen reader you have running by pressing 
cancel
or escape and installing without speech. There is also an NVDA portable
version which you can unzip to a USB flash drive or CD and take with 
you.
NVDA will run on any Windows 2000, XP, or Vista computer. It does not 
yet
have mouse simulation; the developers are waiting until they learn how 
to
implement video hooks before they add that feature.

NVDA does, however, have a different method of object navigation. You 
can
use the number pad and the insert modifier along with keys on the number 
pad
to navigate windows by the order in which they appear logically in a
program. For example, the desktop is the "parent" window and the topmost
window in the entire operating system, while the other windows, such as
those in your applications, are considered "child" windows. NVDA allows 
you
to navigate through these windows, which may even include graphics, and
activate them with a single command. You can also route the mouse to 
these
objects, or you can route the navigator objects to the mouse location if 
you
want. NVDA does not yet give you a way to click the mouse, so the mouse 
has
little use. If you'd like, you can download both the Python development
environment, Python help, and NVDA source code and implement these 
features
or any other features you desire.

NVDA works with applications such as Outlook Express, Internet Explorer 
and
Firefox. It presents web sites in virtual buffers. Many of the 
navigation
keystrokes you are familiar with using JAWS will also work in NVDA. NVDA
also works with Microsoft Word, Excel, the calculator, and other
applications. At press time, the developer is re-writing some of the 
code to
make it work better in some edit fields which currently do not speak 
when
you arrow around.

NVDA also comes with a free and open-source text-to-speech engine which
sounds a lot like Hal's Orpheus. This synthesizer is called eSpeak. You 
can
obtain a SAPI5 version of it by going to http://espeak.sourceforge.net.
There, you can download a version of eSpeak which is SAPI5 compatible 
and
will work with your other screen readers. If you don't already have 
eSpeak
installed before installing NVDA, don't worry. ESpeak has been made into 
a
.dll file; this is a small application tied directly into NVDA. The .dll
version of eSpeak is not SAPI5-compatible. For the latest features, it 
is
recommended that you also install the SAPI5 version of eSpeak on your
system. The two may coexist without interfering with each other.

In addition to the eSpeak speech synthesizer being able to speak many
languages, NVDA itself has been translated into over 10 languages. You 
can
switch between the language interfaces in the NVDA preferences by 
bringing
up the NVDA window with insert+n. In addition, it is easy to change the 
NVDA
modifier to whatever you like. It's as easy as editing a text file. And 
if
you know Python, you can change NVDA to suit your needs and even make it
work with that stubborn inaccessible program your employer may want you 
to
use. NVDA does not currently support braille displays, but that is being
worked on.

A final note on NVDA. If you wish to donate to the project, you may do 
so by
going to www.nvaccess.org. NVDA also has an e-mail list. Information on 
this
can be found on the community link of the main web site,
www.nvda-project.org.

System Access

System Access is a low-cost screen access solution created by Serotek
Corporation. At a cost of $129 per year, you can have System Access on 
up to
two computers. System Access has both desktop and laptop layouts built 
into
it by utilizing more than one modifier key. Since System Access is not 
free
and not open-source, it cannot be modified by the user. Serotek did say,
however, that they will be coming out with braille support and scripting
capability later this year.

System Access lets you work with popular applications such as Outlook,
Outlook Express, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Internet Explorer. It does 
not
work with Firefox. System Access renders web sites and e-mail messages 
in
virtual buffers in much the same way that JAWS, Window-Eyes, and NVDA 
do.

System Access also has a virtual mouse mode with full mouse click
capabilities. You may label graphics and create program packs to upload 
to
the System Access users community.

In addition, System Access lets you connect to the Freedom Box network 
if
you have a Freedom Box account. System Access's default synthesizer is
DECTalk, but it will also work with any SAPI4? or SAPI5-compatible
synthesizer you have on your computer. Both System Access and System 
Access
To Go have a remote mode which will allow you to take control of another
person's computer to provide technical support. This works best when the
other person is also running System Access and is logged in. But you can
remotely control computers that are not running System Access using the
remote control feature built into both System Access and System Access 
To
Go. System Access can also be put onto a USB flash drive. It works on 
any
Windows 2000, XP, or Vista computer.

System Access To Go

Imagine for a moment that you went to a friend's house, or you went to 
the
library, and you need to use their computer. You forgot your USB flash 
drive
with your screen reader on it, and you want to look something up. Or 
what if
you just can't get to the computer's USB ports? Well, there is a 
solution:
System Access To Go. By going to www.satogo.com, you will be guided by
DECTalk into using System Access remotely. This means that, once loaded,
System Access will run from the web site and you can use the public 
computer
or your friend's computer. System Access To Go has all of the features 
of
System Access. But nothing is installed to the hard drive of the 
computer
that System Access To Go is run on. So when you shut it down, there is 
no
trace of the program left behind. With permission from the library, you 
can
use any computer in the library.

System Access To Go may have trouble running on computers with high 
security
firewalls. You may need to ask your network administrator in some cases 
for
permission to run System Access To Go.

If JAWS, Window-Eyes, or Hal isn't for you, you can consider one of 
these
four alternatives.

Regards Steve
Email:  srp at internode.on.net
Windows Live Messenger:  internetuser383 at hotmail.com
Skype:  steve1963