Irony of the day

[kestrell]

I was asked to review an academic article written about a speculative fiction story featuring blindness. The publishing assistant sent me the file in a filetype which my computer couldn't open and, after resending the file to me, I Googled and found out that that filetype is not accessible with Jaws, my screen reader.

Comments

[negothick]

I''m so sorry. Who would have dreamed? Of course, how can I say that? Until about two years ago, Gothic Studies could only send papers for review by mail or fax--I remember using the Superintendent of the Academy's fax machine at midnight once, because nowhere else would let me fax to Great Britain.

But can they resave it in a more accessible format?

[kestrell]

Re changing to an accessible format: I'm not sure the publishing folks understand about accessible formats, although I sent along a link that explained the issue in some detail. I've had similar issues with JFA before, which is why I stopped doing reviews for them; publishing folks seem to *really* not understand why everyone else isn't using the same shiny new programs and formats as they are.

I'm not really stressing about this, so don't apologize. Thank you for bringing the Maureen McHugh story to my attention though: it's a fun story, and it's kind of interesting to see that the blind metaphor still hasn't gotten old for SF writers.

[kallistii]

If you have read the Wake/Watch/Wonder trilogy by Robert J. Sawyer, how dose it do conveying the use of computers by blind people?

[kestrell]

I only read the first story, but I recall that he did a good job of describing the technology f the text-to-speech and the protagonist's use of LJ. I don't know any blind person who would leave her white cane behing, though, even to dance with a cute guy. And then the story took off into the land of magical blind people...

[kallistii]

Is it true that people speed up the reading speed as they get used to listening to the text to speech software?

[kestrell]

Defintely! I tend to set my speech rate a little slower than many screen reader users who have been using text-to-speech (TTS) for years; I think of my rate as "geek on chocolate-covered espresso beans," but many of my friends set their rate to "chipmunks on speed."

There is a learning curve in using TTS, both because you need to get used to the synthetic speech and because you need to memorize a lot of keyboard commands (although there are also menus you can use), which is why I suggest people try to start using the TTS as soon as possible.

There are some cheap TTS programs out there, if you want to play with them. Try googling for "free screen text-to-speech" or "cheap text-to-speech." There are also some programs which sighted people use, and these can be pretty inexpensive also (a lot of writers use TTS, as do many people with dyslexia or other print disabilities. Also, if you know Linux there are many free TTS programs for that OS.

[kestrell]

If you want to talk more about this, e-mail me and I can probably find some more details for you kestrell at livejournal dot com.