[Kde-accessibility] Speech Dispatcher, KDE, dcop, and perlbox

[Luke Yelavich]

On Tue, Nov 22, 2005 at 12:33:15PM EST, david powell wrote:
> > > I want to 
> > > expend my energy solving accessibility problems; not solving multimedia
> > > framework problems.
> >
> > Another issue to consider is the use of hardware speech synthesizers. I
> > am well aware that more people these days use software speech, however
> > there are many of us who prefer to use hardware speech, for a few
> > reasons. Have you thought of the best way for implementing support for
> > that?
> >
> there is provision in kttsd to drive a synth by running a commandline function
> if the h/w synth as software that lets you do basic  say_text " message to 
> speak " type  commands 

The problem with this approach, is that many software as well as 
hardware synths actually send back information about the text they are 
currently speaking, and other status messages when the speech has been 
flushed, etc.

> other than that , its information on them , and the not having any about them
> that is the biggest problem , if we had details of them then it would be 
> easyer to say for certain ,

The speakup project is a great source of info, as it supports many 
hardware synths that are commonly used even today.

> the problem that a hardware synth may have is once given text to speak it 
> is often the case that there is no way of stopping it , and its the interface 
> method that it uses for this sort of command that is dificult with the 
> drivers method that would currently work with one 

Yes there is indeed a way of stopping it. I am currently using a DECtalk 
Express speech synthesizer with speakup on the console, and have no 
problem shutting it up whenever I need to. There is also another screen 
reader of sorts that uses the DECtalk Express, and I am pretty sure it 
can do the same. I intend to try it out shortly to confirm this.

> another solution that i have had success with is a second sound card 
> one being driven by arts/alsa for normal sounds and having kttsd
> using the alsa driver  on the second card for speech 
> i still get some applications fail trying to use the first card together 
> but have no problems with the speech on the second card 

The 2nd soundcard is a good idea, but most people won't see the point of 
having a 2nd card, especially if they have come from Windows where 
everything can come out the one card, with something like Windows-Eyes 
speaking, as well as a sound playing.

Luke