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| Classic Mac Screen Reader |
Posted by: onlyonemac on 2014-12-23 04:10:26
Never mind it's a long story about why I need this but does anyone know of any good screenreader software for Macintosh System 7.x?
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Posted by: bigmessowires on 2014-12-23 10:30:54
Screen reader, as in text-to-speech? I thought that was built into Simple Text under System 7.something, but I may be wrong.
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Posted by: onlyonemac on 2014-12-23 13:27:44
Yes SimpleText does have speech output functionallity but I'm looking for a system-wide screenreader.
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Posted by: Macdrone on 2014-12-23 14:08:10
System 7.5 had a disability function to magnify and speak.
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Posted by: onlyonemac on 2014-12-24 06:21:45
System 7.5 had a disability function to magnify and speak. It couldn't act as a screen reader though... it was only for if the program could provide speech output.
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Posted by: Macdrone on 2014-12-24 07:12:47
Text to speech worked with the accessibility option on my performa 638 but it's been 20 years so I could be rembering wrong.
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Posted by: onlyonemac on 2014-12-24 10:34:22
Text to speech worked with the accessibility option on my performa 638 but it's been 20 years so I could be rembering wrong. Yes, text to speech works fine but I'm needing an actual screenreader not just text to speech software.
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Posted by: onlyonemac on 2015-01-11 09:30:33
It seems that the only screenreader for that Classic Macintosh operating system is OutSpoken by Berkeley Systems. Now I just need to figure out where to get it from...
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Posted by: onlyonemac on 2015-01-11 09:59:47
I just managed to download that screenreader a moment ago, however I can't find a user manual anywhere (although I've figured out that the numeric keypad does something, but I have absolutely no idea what). Also from running it on an emulator the RAM requires seem to be quite high and I have no idea what the processor speed requirements are so I'll just have to see if it's fast enough to use on my Mac without causing ridiulous amounts of disk thrashing due to memory swapping (and swapping out system extensions is, in my experiance, a bad idea because then things start running very slowly 🙂 ).
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Posted by: onlyonemac on 2015-01-15 10:51:06
It seems to run fine on my Mac and I've figured out most of what the numeric keypad does, but due to the lack of that Macintosh's provision for extensive keyboard navigation (some functions are only available by using the mouse) the interface is rather difficult to navigate with a screenreader. With this in mind, the screenreader allows the user to use the mouse to examine the screen contents and it will read out items on the screen when the mouse passes over them, but using a mouse without the feedback of seeing the mouse pointer on the screen is practically impossible. Nevertheless it is an interesting concept, but I don't think that using a screenreader on my Mac will really be practical.
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Posted by: IPalindromeI on 2015-01-15 11:07:13
Screenreaders aren't fun to use with GUIs. AFAIK, most blind people used to use just a Unix CLI with preferably line based stuff, but I'm not sure now.
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Posted by: onlyonemac on 2015-01-16 02:30:43
Yes, screenreaders are always awkward with GUIs, but they are much easier to use when the GUI can be navigated with the keyboard alone because mice are difficult for blind people to use. But yes, CLIs are deffinately better for blind people, although there is a Linux distribution with a GUI optimised for use by blind people and I can't say that it's amazing but it does work quite well.
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