Hi folks,
I’m new to this community, and happen to be totally blind.
I primarily work with Windows, and in recent weeks, I have been attempting to one degree or another, to use David Kinder’s open source Windows Inform application.
I know that he created the front end for it at least.
Some aspects, actually work pretty well, but many other things, don’t speak hardly at all, or maybe not even anything is spoken, depending on what screen reader is being used at the time.
I was told that David is pretty active on here, so I thought that I’d finally join this community for myself.
I did create earlier, an audio demonstration, using the latest Windows Inform open source application, with three separate screen reading applications, just to showoff a couple of observations as far as what can and cannot presently be done, but I’m not going to be able to link to it here. MOD EDIT: Here it is!
It’s easier to actually create audio specific demonstrations when screen reader applications are involved with any software application, especially so that the authors can hear how they’re being used by folks with disabilities.
It’s been well over 10 years now, but I actually had an opportunity about 17 years ago, to play a few Z machine based inform games, though I cannot remember the specifics.
What I do clearly remember is banging away on a Braille keyboard, and getting all kinds of interesting parser responses.
For anybody using a screen reader, (or quite frequently multiple screen readers), since some may work better than others in very specific situations, you’ll find yourself relying heavily on the keyboard.
But should all the screen readers you have fail to speak at all depending upon what application you are attempting to use, and this can and does happen, unfortunately, it is the nature of computer software development, well, in that case, you’ll be stuck trying to find sighted assistance in a situation like that, should you run into it, most likely.
Don’t get me started on the can of worms that trying to customize screen readers to work with applications can become, though.
Sometimes that’s a possibility, and other times, it isn’t.
But it’s better, in nearly all cases, to have accessibility fixes be implemented by an application developer, rather than having to try to make the screen reader work with the application.