Comments on: Subscription accessibility

By: AlastairC

AlastairC — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 12:36:46 +0000

Hi Ofer, You would be better off going to a general accessibility forum like accessifyforums for general feedback.

By: Ofer

Ofer — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 19:19:46 +0000

[Advert / instructions for a specific product removed - Alastair]

By: AlastairC

AlastairC — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 17:50:35 +0000

Oh dear, there is some more dodgy marketing going on for a similar product (via ITPro) where they say:

"It's the silver bullet," IMRG's Chief Executive James Roper told Reuters. "Put this little button on your site and suddenly you are legal."

By: Phil

Phil — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 10:18:05 +0000

Hi.

Actually the beauty of Talklets, from Textic, (interest declared, I’m lead developer), is that it needs no install! AND can be used on virtually any site. “Enabled” or otherwise. And has a high level voice. Beating Browsalowd on all counts (IMHO).

This is a demo and should work for most. if it doesn’t go here to try http://textictalk.com/talklets/install.aspx

By: AlastairC

AlastairC — Mon, 22 May 2006 14:17:43 +0000

Thanks Karl,

I’m not sure what you mean by sound file?

Once you’ve got the (browser) pluggin, I thought it simply read from the browser window? (Not DOM, in IE’s case at least.)

I know you can get different voices for it (some of them very good, at a small license cost), but I’m pretty sure it’s not on a site by site basis.

By: Karl

Karl — Mon, 22 May 2006 13:27:59 +0000

Good write up Alistair, Dan pointed me this way after I commented about Textic and their “Well Adjusted” Campaign over at my blog.

I can’t readily find the evidence but we looked at Browsaloud a couple of years ago and discovered that the audio file was about 1Mb in size and just raises a different accessibility barrier with regard to download speed. Easy for corporate users to not notice that.

By: Dan

Dan — Fri, 19 May 2006 11:54:30 +0000

Very nicely put Alastair. The browsealoud model just doesn’t work for me either, but they do seem to be capturing a good bit of the public sector market.

By: AlastairC

AlastairC — Sun, 14 May 2006 17:25:01 +0000

Thanks Patrick, I’ve had a fairly relaxed launch, it’s been sitting locally for a while, and I put it live last week. (Thus the old article dates.)

I doubt that the user was from browsealoud in this case. They don’t tend to push it as something for blind people for obvious reasons.

Also remember that you can be classed as blind and still retain some vision. I got the impression he was a little confused as to what he wants or should have, which is really what prompted me to post. Plus I don’t think their business model will be successful for the users.

By: patrick h. lauke

patrick h. lauke — Sun, 14 May 2006 13:19:52 +0000

Bruce Lawson pointed me to your post here…great reading. I’ve been meaning to write my personal thoughts on browsealoud in article form for some time now, and this spurs me on just to put finger to keyboard when I get a chance and just let rip.

Incidentally, I can’t help but think that this “blind user” that contacted your client may well be fictitious (it does sound rather odd that a blind user would find browsealoud useful, as to use their computer they’d presumably already have a screenreader running on their OS)…could this be a new slant to TextHelp’s “plant” users, such as Dyslexic Duncan http://accessifyforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=22009#22009 ? Something doesn’t quite smell right, if you ask me.

But hey, you know, the PAS “recommends” browsealoud, or does it? http://www.webstandards.org/2006/05/11/all-aboard-the-pas-78-gravy-train/