Open Source AT Software: Can it Benefit Someone You Know? by Steve Jacobs
Hi! I agreed to write a series of articles focused on open source assistive technology. Before doing so, for those of you who never heard of me, I thought I’d tell you something about me. I have been in the computer industry for (gulp) 32 years. I spent most of my professional career working for NCR Corporation. From 1996 until my retirement in 2002 I served as the President of IDEAL at NCR Corporation. My responsibility was to increase the accessibility of NCR’s line of financial and retail products and supporting NCR customers with disabilities. In 2002, I spun-off our organization from NCR into my own business. We reincorporated under the name IDEAL Group, Inc. Here is a listing of our projects, past and present.
IDEAL Group’s work over the past six years has involved providing assistive technology to organizations and individuals who can’t afford it. Initially, we bought assistive technology (AT) software and gave it away free. However, the time arrived when it was no longer feasible to give software away free. Therefore we explored the potential benefits of open source AT software.
Open Source Software
“Open Source” refers to a set of principles and practices on how to write software, the most important principle is the source code is openly available. Usually, open source software is available free on the Internet.
I know some skeptics will immediately think of the statement “You get what you pay for”; however, there are several examples which prove that this statement does not dismiss the effectiveness of open source software. In fact, there are many open source software applications that far surpass their commercial counterparts. 7-Zip, a file compression utility, is but one example of this. 7-Zip is in use by tens-of-millions of users and has been downloaded more than 38 million times!
Mozilla has created a vibrant community around Firefox, its open source web browser. Mozilla setup an easy-to-use bug reporting/feature request system (Bugzilla). It also provides outstanding documentation and support forums (Mozillazine).
Not only is Firefox an example of a well-managed, well-supported product, it is also an example of an open source solution that provides more functionality and customizability for end users than its commercial counterparts. With its extension mechanism and an official website dedicated to user created add-ons, Firefox puts end users in control and gives them the power to tailor their browser experience to their needs and preferences. Users can download extensions that allow them to control their music player directly from their browser, block annoying advertisements, and apply custom style sheets to web pages for easier viewing. There is a standalone screen reading extension for Firefox. All of these extensions are open source and freely available.
Mozilla provides a commenting area for all extensions listed on its site so end users can give constructive criticism and request features and extensions. Developers can learn from this feedback and improve their extensions.
Even though Firefox 1.0 was released only three years ago, it has already received over 400 million downloads and accounts for about 20% of all browsers in use. This is quite a success story, and there are parallel success stories in the area of open source assistive technology software.
Open Source AT for the Blind and Visually Impaired
This article highlights open source AT software applications for people who are blind… as will my next article.Subsequent articles will focus on individuals with low-vision, individuals with learning disabilities (LD)… and so on. I selected this order based on the open source AT we use, develop, work with and support.
Fire Vox
Fire Vox, developed by Charles L. Chen, accommodates different users with different needs. For blind users, all Fire Vox commands are keyboard activated. In addition, the keyboard commands can be easily reconfigured in the self-voicing Fire Vox Options menu to avoid conflicts with other accessibility software products and to suit personal preferences. Fire Vox's highlighting feature makes it easy to keep track of where it is reading from on a page. This highlighting feature is useful for dyslexic users and partially sighted users. This makes it especially useful for web developers interested in testing their web pages or educators working with visually impaired students.
Because Fire Vox works directly within the Firefox browser, it always provides users with a live view of the webpage, rather than a frozen snapshot which is what many other screen readers provide. This means that Fire Vox has the capacity to handle pages with dynamic content better, an ability that is becoming increasingly essential as the online world adopts Web 2.0 AJAX applications.
Fire Vox is built on the idea of providing access for web browsing as opposed to forcing people to use a completely different way to browse. Fire Vox uses the visible Firefox cursor and respects that positioning whenever possible, and there is no need to switch between modes.
Support for Live Regions Marked up with WAI-ARIA
The WAI-ARIA markup is designed to make AJAX accessible. Fire Vox is helping to lead the way towards AJAX accessibility by being the first assistive technology to support Live Regions marked up with WAI-ARIA. To see a demonstration of this, please visit: http://accessibleajax.clcworld.net.
Support for the CSS 3 Speech Module
Imagine how nice it would be if the way a web page is read aloud by a screen reader could be styled with CSS, just like its font and layout. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to tell a screen reader exactly how to speak something tricky such as Roman numerals, oddly spelled titles, etc? Well, the CSS 3 speech module gives web developers those abilities. And unlike other screen readers, Fire Vox has support for these speech module properties. After setting up Fire Vox you can access the following link for a demo with CSS 3 Speech Module properties. Direct MathML Support
MathML support is built into Firefox, and Fire Vox will read MathML back using Abraham Nemeth's math speak rules. There aren’t any additional plug-ins that you need to buy or install to get MathML working. After setting up Fire Vox access the following link for a demo page with MathML.
Site Specific Enhancements
If the option to "use site specific enhancements" is turned on, Fire Vox will automatically retrieve and apply the latest AxsJAX scripts to improve your web surfing experience. AxsJAX is a framework for injecting accessibility enhancements into web pages - these enhancements are tailored to make their web pages speak intelligently. The AxsJAX showcase page has a list of the pages that have been AxsJAXed so far.To learn more about AxsJAX, please see the AxsJAX page.
Constant Evolution
Charles Chen works hard to keep Fire Vox up to date, to enable it to support the latest web technologies, and to improve on what it already does. I speak from first-hand experience. We are teaching students at the Ohio State School for the Blind to use Fire Vox. They love the simplicity of the interface, the cutting edge features it offers, and the freedom of being able to install it on any PC without worrying about licensing restrictions. Fire Vox is language friendly. You pick the language (you will need to install a SAPI voice for that language) and Fire Vox will talks to you. If you have voices for multiple languages installed, Fire Vox will choose the correct language to use for the website you are browsing. We use Fire Vox with English, Spanish, Chinese and Japanese voices! Here is a Fire Vox Tutorial developed by Charles Chen.
That’s it. I hope Fire Vox proves useful to someone you know! Until next time!