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barotto / IBMulator

The IBM PS/1 emulator.
https://barotto.github.io/IBMulator
GNU General Public License v3.0
111 stars 4 forks source link

Accessibility and assistive technologies #88

Open blindphoneman opened 4 months ago

blindphoneman commented 4 months ago

screenshot_0000

Running Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy from Lost Treasures of Infocom CD-Rom

Good job!

barotto commented 4 months ago

Thank you for sharing your experience! I'm glad it's working well.

I was thinking about adding text-to-speech to the interface in the next version, so that IBMulator can tell to the user what its GUI is doing, like what window is active or which element has focus. Do you think it would be helpful?

blindphoneman commented 4 months ago

Hi:

This is a fantastic idea.

Don’t know how far you want to go with it, but, here are a couple ideas:

The custom dialogs that come up are not accessible with my Windows screen readers, so, if they could be made to speak, that would be helpful. I can use the “native” file dialogs, but, the custom dialogs allow more flexibility.

Here’s another idea:

I know the BIOS text screen is always available to the program. Maybe that could be spoken. One emulator developer wrote this into a TI 99/4A emulator called Classic 99. His program installs similarly to Ibmulator, so you can run it and delete it after you’re through. He put a screen reading mode into the program that uses a dif algorithm to read the screen. You can look at what he has done at https://www.harmlesslion.com/software/classic99.

A third possibility, and, my favorite idea, is to allow either a comport or parallel port to be configurable to speak anything sent through it. You could then use a DOS screen reader to handle the data. I currently have lpt1 directed to a file, and, in Windows 10, it lets mee use com4 as the file. Windows 11 will not let me do this. One day, I’ll have to move to Windows 11, if this PC dies.

Could a second comport just for speech be added when this is needed? At least, in Windows, you could have data sent to one of the PS1’s comports spoken using the SAPI protocol, or maybe Windows 1core voices. A couple screen readers can use “generic” synthesizers. That way, you wouldn’t need to worry about control codes. The main control code you’d need at a minimum would be to make the speech silence with ctrl-X. Not permanent silence, just stops it from speaking what it already has in its buffers.

You may not do anything with these, but, here are links for 3 different screen readers. Probably the most popular one in the day was either JAWS or Vocal-Eyes. ASAP is my favorite one, and has the smallest footprint and uses only one command to start it.

Here are the links:

JAWS: https://nfbnet.org/files/blind/JDOSFREE.EXE

Vocal-Eyes: https://nfbnet.org/files/blind/VE.ZIP

Automatic Screen Access Program (ASAP): https://nfbnet.org/files/blind/ASAPDEMO.EXE

JAWS is Freeware, the other 2 are demos, but, cannot be purchased anymore.

This is more than you’ll need, but, maybe save it and see if any of these give you ideas to work with.

If you want to contact me, you can email me at ***. I’ll be happy to test anything you come up with.

Thanks so much for thinking about this.

From: Marco Bortolin @.> Sent: Wednesday, June 26, 2024 10:01 AM To: barotto/IBMulator @.> Cc: blindphoneman @.>; Author @.> Subject: Re: [barotto/IBMulator] Screenshot for you (Issue #88)

Thank you for sharing your experience! I'm glad it's working well.

I was thinking about adding text-to-speech to the interface in the next version, so that IBMulator can tell to the user what the its GUI is doing, like what window is active or which element has focus. Do you think it would be helpful?

blindphoneman commented 4 months ago

Hi:

The link for Classic99 should be:

https://harmlesslion.com/software/classic99

It didn't like it with the www on it.

Sorry for the confusion.

barotto commented 4 months ago

Thank you for your help. I need to study the technologies and find the proper solutions. I'll definitely contact you for future testing and help on the matter!

blindphoneman commented 4 months ago

No problem. I’m not in a hurry.

Take care!

From: Marco Bortolin @.> Sent: Thursday, June 27, 2024 11:00 AM To: barotto/IBMulator @.> Cc: blindphoneman @.>; Author @.> Subject: Re: [barotto/IBMulator] Screenshot for you (Issue #88)

Thank you for your help. I need to study the technologies and find the proper solutions. I'll definitely contact you for future testing and help on the matter!

— Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/barotto/IBMulator/issues/88#issuecomment-2194952935 , or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AKY6KCX64MT36ILZDJXNWHLZJQSGBAVCNFSM6AAAAABJ54PDFCVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZDCOJUHE2TEOJTGU . You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: @.***>