OS2World OLD-STATIC-BACKUP Forum

WebSite Information => Article Discussions => Topic started by: Blonde Guy on 2012.03.01, 18:39:21

Title: Making ATMs Accessible
Post by: Blonde Guy on 2012.03.01, 18:39:21
http://www.os2world.com/content/view/21108/2/ (http://www.os2world.com/content/view/21108/2/)
QuotePosted by Martin Iturbide - Monday, 26 September 2011


There i. .. .

Just wondering... I know there is DOS text to speech software. Is there anything available for OS/2?

Installing a sound card and jack on ATM is no picnic, either, but there are quite a few machines still in service. I know my bank is still 100% OS/2 ATM.

Worse, the software is closed, so reading the text and blanking the screen has to be done by an external program.
Title: Re: Making ATMs Accessible
Post by: DougB on 2012.03.01, 19:43:41
Years ago, I played with Backtalk:

http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/os2/apps/speech/btalk201.zip (http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/os2/apps/speech/btalk201.zip)

(hope this comes through properly). It actually worked pretty good, especially after adding the available dictionary (mentioned in the docs). It should work even better today because of the faster processors (I must try it again).
Title: Re: Making ATMs Accessible
Post by: miturbide on 2012.03.02, 14:43:30
Hi Neil

IBM used to have Screen Reader for OS/2. It was focused for the for blind and learning-disabled people, but I had never saw it working or try it out. I think it used a IBM Keypad (picture attached).

http://www.springerlink.com/content/p765n686125m148v/

ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/sns/sr-os2/sr2doc/guitalk.txt

http://www.nfbcal.org/nfb-rd/0004.html
Title: Re: Making ATMs Accessible
Post by: RobertM on 2012.03.03, 06:46:26
Quote from: Blonde Guy on 2012.03.01, 18:39:21
http://www.os2world.com/content/view/21108/2/ (http://www.os2world.com/content/view/21108/2/)
QuotePosted by Martin Iturbide - Monday, 26 September 2011


There i. .. .

Just wondering... I know there is DOS text to speech software. Is there anything available for OS/2?

Installing a sound card and jack on ATM is no picnic, either, but there are quite a few machines still in service. I know my bank is still 100% OS/2 ATM.

Worse, the software is closed, so reading the text and blanking the screen has to be done by an external program.

There are a few different pieces of software for OS/2 - you can find most of them on Hobbes. I use BackTalk. There is also Festival and MBrola.  And of course, the already mentioned Screen Reader/2 which I think actually was able to take advantage of OS/2's OO interface.

I thought at some point SVOX was available, but I can't find it (maybe it was just wishful thinking). For a new effort, I'd definitely suggest seeing if we can get a build of SVOX running on OS/2. It has some very good results (I've replaced the stock Android 2.x tts engine with SVOX and one of the SVOX voices ("Grace")).