[gui-talk] Which companies should I contact?

[Steve Jacobson]

Jim,

If I understand your product from what you say here and what you have said on other lists, I believe you are correct that the screen reader developers are not your 
best place to go.  Having said that, though, I also don't see where you are really likely to cut into their business unless I misunderstand your product.  If one used 
one's computer primarily for reading documents, I could see that it might, but unless your product is envisioned as part of all computer software, it isn't going to 
eliminate the need for screen readers or even substantially decrease the need as I see it.  We use screen readers to interact with word processors to modify and 
create documents, we interact with spreadsheets, we we read and create e-mail, we use spell checkers, we edit audio and rip CD's, we maintain our computers 
copying, moving and deleting files and running other utilities, and we use our computers as terminals on other computers.  Therefore, I do not see what you have to 
gain 
by saying you will cut into the business of screen readers, when, as far as I can see, what you are proposing will make the job of screen readers easier.  In some 
cases, some of us may use Adobe's text-to-speech reading capability instead of our screen readers, but in most cases we are able to control the flow of information 
better 
with screen readers and there is better interfacing to more voices and braille displays.  This has little to do with the accessibility of a document, so I just don't see a 
conflict there between your product and screen readers.

from what I thought I understood about your process, it needs to be integrated into the document creation process working more or less behind the scenes to imbed 
the structure needed for documents to be accessible.  If that is at all accurate, then contacting the creators of document software such as Microsoft and whatever 
publishers tend to use would seem like the place to go.  If your product does not need to be part of the creation process but can convert documents, that would 
widen your options greatly, and it might be a product that could be included in something like Kurzweil 1000 or perhaps even be sold with screen readers.  Also 
remember that Freedom Scientific, the makers of JFW, has the Open Book product which is a compettitor to Kurzweil.  Remember further that Freedom 
Scientific, GW Micro, and Humanware all sell note-taking devices and other players that have the built-in capability of playing various kinds of text files.  None of 
these companies are strictly screen reading companies.  Nuance, which makes OmniPage OCR software also converts PDF documents into other formats such as 
Microsoft Word and RTF.  There might be a role for your technology there.  Again, though, my understanding is that your process is intended to work at document 
creation time which means that none of our access technology companies are going to be in a position to make use of your product in the way that you have 
described elsewhere, and since the processes used by Nuance are guessing at the intended purpose of format from appearance, it probably doesn't fit there, either.

I hope this is of some help.  I think looking at where to focus the implementation of your product is a good idea, as you are doing here.  

Best regards,

Steve Jacobson

On Thu, 3 Dec 2009 02:53:11 -0600, James Pepper wrote:

>Yes that was me, I can format Acrobat for accessibility better than what
>Adobe teaches!

>Well right now I have a page layout program that makes PDF files that are
>accessible to the most basic screen readers. It also can make content for
>print in full color so it can be used to layout books.  I am not sure that
>JAWS and GW Micro would be thrilled at the idea of my promoting free text to
>speech engines.  Of course in the short run they will still command more
>features, but this will eat into their market.  My process does make them
>work better with PDF format.

>I will look into K1000 and OpenBook but my format is more of a page layout
>program where you make content once for everyone.

>This is not a matter of converting the content to an accessible format, the
>format is inherently accessible.

>So I have contacted Adobe already but I was wondering who else out there is
>a competitor to Adobe?  Who do I contact? Trying to find the connections.

>The the basic fundamental process is a cross platform type of thing and so I
>wanted to try to get it embedded in word processors so that ordinary people
>could make content and not know they are making it accessible.  Because
>right now we are all relying on people knowing how to do this properly and
>they are very few in number but if everyone could make accessible content
>that is intended to be accessible from the beginning then we can fix this
>problem.

>I think I've got it!

>Does anyone know the accessibility people at Apple?

>I laid out the format to work in a lot of languages, more than the present
>crop of screen readers support because it works using the text to speech
>engines which are being created for the DAISY format.  So I have been doing
>a lot of work with Unicode time and date formats with this just to make it
>capable of working around the world.  For instance in Hindi and other
>langauges of India.  Of course most of these languages do not have a screen
>reader yet, but I thought that by demonstrating that this can be done, that
>it would give people an incentive to try!  I am not limited by language in
>this format.  And I know how to use screen readers for languages that do not
>have screen readers yet!  And of course this means that this can reach the
>illiterate all over the world. so that is why I laid it out in so many
>languages.

>Just looking for some advice.

>James Pepper
>_______________________________________________
>gui-talk mailing list
>gui-talk at nfbnet.org
>http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/gui-talk_nfbnet.org
>To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for gui-talk:
>http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/options/gui-talk_nfbnet.org/steve.jacobson%40visi.com