Ask HN: How do I put together a computer for my blind mom?

#1

Post by probably_wrong » Thu, May 14, 2015, 5:25 PM UTC

As the title says, I want to design an interface that my blind mom can use. I tried JAWS, but as an old woman she finds it too complex. I fear the same will happen with a non-custom emacspeak.

I just need to patch together something that reads web pages in Spanish, books, and maybe e-mail. That's it. Has any of you done something similar?

Re: Ask HN: How do I put together a computer for my blind mom?

#2

Post by Raphmedia » Thu, May 14, 2015, 5:46 PM UTC

I know that OS X comes with a lot of features out of the box.

Re: Ask HN: How do I put together a computer for my blind mom?

#3

Post by Hoff » Thu, May 14, 2015, 5:51 PM UTC

Raphmedia wrote: post #2

I know that OS X comes with a lot of features out of the box.

OS X and iOS both: https://www.apple.com/accessibility/

Re: Ask HN: How do I put together a computer for my blind mom?

#4

Post by r3m6 » Thu, May 14, 2015, 5:52 PM UTC

With iMacros (for Chrome or Firefox) you can automate for example the login to websites. Maybe that can be part of your setup. Our use AutoHotkey (AHK) to automate Windows as a whole.

Re: Ask HN: How do I put together a computer for my blind mom?

#5

Post by a2tech » Thu, May 14, 2015, 5:52 PM UTC

The Internet is not blind friendly. It sucks, and we need to do better, but for now, blind people are mostly locked out of the Internet.

OS X has some really nice screen reading/accessibility stuff builtin and you can have it do things like read books from the iBook's Store out loud. Mail.app has some support for voice control if you're willing to get it all setup before giving her the computer.

Re: Ask HN: How do I put together a computer for my blind mom?

#6

Post by brudgers » Thu, May 14, 2015, 5:53 PM UTC

Scott Hanselman's podcast interview with Katherine Moss is pretty good and describes her combination of tools approach. It's about a year old, so pretty much current in regard to tech stack.

http://hanselminutes.com/413/im-a-blind-software-technician-...

Re: Ask HN: How do I put together a computer for my blind mom?

#7

Post by primitivesuave » Thu, May 14, 2015, 5:54 PM UTC

If you have a Mac, you can create AppleScripts to automate most of the functions that the average computer user performs. You can put each of these AppleScripts in the "Speakable Items" folder, and the file name of the script will become the command that your mother says to activate the script.

Re: Ask HN: How do I put together a computer for my blind mom?

#8

Post by cmaury » Thu, May 14, 2015, 5:55 PM UTC

Unfortunately there isn't a good solution for this, especially on the desktop.

You may have a much better time with an iphone/ipad/ipod touch. The interface is much simpler than a desktop, and VoiceOver is much easier to use than JAWS.

Apps that can help (there isn't one catch all) Apple mail is pretty simple, and fully VO compatible Voice Dream Reader simple text to speech app that syncs with pocket, evernote, dropbox, and most importantly bookshare. a service for the blind with pretty much every book published on it.

Web pages are hard to navigate, but maybe some combination of pocket and voice dream reader will do the trick.

I'm going blind and this is how I perform the tasks you're talking about.

Unfortunately, if these solutions are beyond the means of your mom, there aren't many other options for the tasks you are talking about,

I'm working on an SDK that allows developers to add a conversational interface to mobile apps. This type of siri-like interface turns out to be much easier for seniors to learn than traditional assistive technology. You can check it out at conversantlabs.com

Feel free to message me if you want to talk more about helping your mom out.

Re: Ask HN: How do I put together a computer for my blind mom?

#9

Post by mherrmann » Thu, May 14, 2015, 5:57 PM UTC

NVDA (http://www.nvaccess.org) is a free, open source alternative to JAWS. AFAIK, Firefox is the browser with the best support for Accessibility.

Re: Ask HN: How do I put together a computer for my blind mom?

#10

Post by tjohns » Thu, May 14, 2015, 6:02 PM UTC

I'd recommend looking at a tablet, either Android or iOS. Navigation is simpler in general, which means navigating via the screen reader (TTS) is going to be easier. You also get access to Google Now / Siri, which is nice in this case because it gives you a natural language interface to some of the information on the web — especially since many websites don't play nicely with screen readers.

Another option you could look at, if you really want to go with a desktop computer, is a braille terminal (https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Refreshable_braille_display). I've seen some blind colleagues at work use them, but I don't know how the usability compares to a screen reader.