[nfbcs] Speech with supplemental large print

Fri Nov 6 13:26:32 UTC 2009

Hi Tracy -- Yes, Vista was probably one of the best large print solutions I 
used back when I was able.  It was half hardware and half software and 
piggy-backed on the PC's video card to enlarge the screen.  I was sad to see 
it go when Windows moved from a novelty to a necessity in the workplace. 
But you know, even though I still had some vision when that happened, i 
found it was much easier to use speech with a GUI than screen enlargement. 
Maybe because my vision was that bad -- but I had trouble enough 
distinguishing letters in large print because of the distortion in my 
vision, so the thought of enlarging and staring at graphics as well was 
downright painful.  Also, I don't know if this is true of most partials, but 
different color combinations were more easy to see than others, and I needed 
bright white foreground on a dark background, and with a GUI it is harder to 
impose that kind of control on the interface.

Anyway, back to Vista, that name has been used for a number of technical 
entities over the years -- The screen enlarger was one, a C programming 
language test suite was another, and of course Windows had to use that name 
too.  And who knows what else.  It's amazing how the copyright of that name 
never stuck. But of course, Microsoft could get by with using anything... 
Remember the lawsuit of Apple vs Microsoft for using the name "Windows", 
which was a Mac term? Apple lost, then later Lindows came out for linux, and 
Microsoft sued and lost that time, for the same reason it won against Apple. 
So what goes around comes around...*smile*

Happy computing all!
--le

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tracy Carcione" <carcione at access.net>
To: "NFBnet NFBCS Mailing List" <nfbcs at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Thursday, November 05, 2009 1:26 PM
Subject: Re: [nfbcs] Speech with supplemental large print

Vista is what my husband uses!  He likes it, enough that he is still using
a Windows 3.1 machine with dial-up.  But that machine is giving up the
ghost, and the large print is too slow for him to do much with now.  You
know, the old nose-against-the-screen trick.  So he's switched to Jaws at
work.  I guess I'll try to get him to try the Magic again.  Too bad no one
makes something like the Vista anymore; it seems to work so well.
Anyway, thanks.
Tracy

> Hi -- I'm sorry I never used wither magic or zoomtext -- when I had
> partial
> vision I used something called Vista (yes that is what it was called) from
> TSI, which is now out of business.  It ran on DOS, not windows, but was a
> great little tool.
> I believe magic and zoomtext are direct competitors of each other, and I
> don't know the benefits of either.  Zoomtext has been around longer, as I
> remember.  Good luck evaluating the options. Maybe you can get demos of
> them
> to run in 30 minute mode or something so you can try them out.  If you are
> committed to using jaws I think magic would be better as it is made by FS
> and is compatible with jaws.
> But that's my only recommendation.
> Have fun.
> --le
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Albert Yoo" <albertyoo1 at hotmail.com>
> To: <nfbcs at nfbnet.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, November 03, 2009 8:27 PM
> Subject: Re: [nfbcs] Speech with supplemental large print
>
>
>
> What is the difference between Magic and zoom text? Is one better than the
> other? Albert
>
>> From: lauraeaves at yahoo.com
>> To: nfbcs at nfbnet.org
>> Date: Mon, 2 Nov 2009 13:15:20 -0600
>> Subject: Re: [nfbcs] Speech with supplemental large print
>>
>> Hi again -- I always thought magic could be used with jaws, but as I
>> bought
>> jaws after I lost my ability to read large print, I never tried magic.
>> Good
>> luck finding a solution.
>> --le
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Tracy Carcione" <carcione at access.net>
>> To: "NFBnet NFBCS Mailing List" <nfbcs at nfbnet.org>
>> Sent: Monday, November 02, 2009 1:02 PM
>> Subject: Re: [nfbcs] Speech with supplemental large print
>>
>>
>> Yes, my husband and I are both using Jaws.
>> He looked at both Mabic and Zoomtext, but they both seem like they're
>> magnification, with a bit of speech. He really needs the
>> opposite--speech, with magnification sometimes.
>>
>> Maybe the manugacturers figure that people who can use magnification
>> will
>> use it until the bitter end, then switch completely to speech. And maybe
>> that's how it is; I don't know.
>> I just think it would be very useful for my husband to have some
>> magnification, but he needs a robust speech package, too.
>> Tracy
>>
>> > you could look at zoomtext. I think magic and zoomtext are the 2 big
>> > name
>> > enlargers.
>> > Are you a jaws user?
>> > --le
>> >
>> > ----- Original Message -----
>> > From: "Tracy Carcione" <carcione at access.net>
>> > To: <nfbcs at nfbnet.org>
>> > Sent: Monday, November 02, 2009 7:38 AM
>> > Subject: [nfbcs] Speech with supplemental large print
>> >
>> >
>> > Is there any program, or programs that play well together, that would
>> > give
>> > my husband speech, with large print when he needs it? We looked at
>> > Magic,
>> > but that seemed more like large print with some speech, and he needs
>> the
>> > other way around.
>> >
>> > I use a braille display to supplement speech. If something's not
>> clear,
>> > or I want to see the spelling, or I need to look at a string of
>> numbers,
>> > or see a column layout, I use the braille display. It's extremely
>> > helpful. I think my husband would find it equally helpful if he could
>> > use
>> > large print in the same way, but I don't know anything about
>> > magnification
>> > software.
>> > Does anyone know of something that will do what I want?
>> > Thanks.
>> > Tracy
>> >
>> >
>> >
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