This is a page for the programs I'm working on to make Mac computers easier to use for visually impaired users. And of course, everyone else may find them useful as well.
This is a program for bookport and bookcorrier users. It's called UBT, and is compatible with both ppc and intel macs. You'll need to compile it, but there should be no problem once it's compiled. The main page for the ubt tool is: http://www.nfbcal.org/~buhrow/ubt/, but we're providing it here for convenience. ubt-0.93.tar.gz
Here is a list of programs known to work with voice over. A dditions, corrections and comments should be mailed to the address on the programs page. List of programs compatible with voice over
games page.
Current softcon programs and their versions are:
For more information, you can read the Softcon dvd player readme here.
softcon audio burn allows you to burn audio cds w/o building an image or creating a directory to hold the files first. It will handle mp3, wav, aiff, m4a, and raw pcm formats automatically, and convert them to the format required for building redbook compatible cds that will play in any audio cd player. Using this program prevents the need to rename your tracks to get them in the right order on the cd as is necessary when using the OSX built-in audio burn feature.
Softcon Pdf Viewer is a program that allows voice over users to read a pdf file from end to end, without having to stop after every page, hit next page, then begin reading again. Visually, there's very little difference between Softcon Pdf Viewer, and the preview app provided by Apple, as far as displaying pdfs go anyway. There are differences in interface elements, but all the functions are there.
Unfortunately, voice over users cannot (yet) access all the functionality such as annotations, links and the like. This release is mainly to provide vo users the automatic reading of pdfs, which is not possible using preview under tiger.
Softcon Data Burn is a program that allows building of data discs containing multiple file systems if desired. I.E. you can have both a juliet file system for dos, and a iso9660 file system for unix machines. It supports iso, iso9660, HPFSPlus, and juliet. The program allows configuration of each file system separately. Each file system can have either the same files on the other ones, or completely separate files, it's up to you.
Softcon data burn doesn't support dvd formats for movies, but it can put files on a dvd, treating it as a very large cd, so you don't have to span those large backup files over multiple cds, just put them on a single dvd disc.
Softcon Yahtzee is an implementation of the game Yahtzee. It's played by rolling 5 dice, and trying to get certain number combinations for point values. Obviously, the higher the final score, the better.Softcon News Reader
Softcon News Reader is an rss news reader that is 100 percent voiceover compatible, and can work in conjunction with your existing news reader such as mail or safari to read those rss feeds.
download sc 7.16 from here.
We've written a couple of scripts to make using voice over easier as well. These scripts are:
Say Time, say date, say both and Move File.
These scripts will, when combined with Spark, (see the programs compatible with voiceover page) give you the ability to have a key combination speak the time, date, or both.
This is functionality windows screen readers have, and is something missing from voice over. You can download the source, or the compiled versions to the scripts, so you can modify them as you may need and use them however you like. These scripts are merely provided here for your convinience. There are no restrictions on what you may do with these files. There are no comments in the source, if this is a problem, please let me know, and I'll add them.
Some users will run into problems downloading the compiled versions, with OSX claiming you need os9 compatibility mode to run the scripts. If this happens, please download the source, and recompile them. As soon as we can get this problem fixed, we'll post new versions of the compiled scripts.
Say Both source
Say Both compiled
Say date source
Say date compiled
say time source
say time compiled
Move file is a script to take the place of cut and paste in the finder. Voice over users cannot cut files and paste them into a new location, thereby moving the files. Instead, voice over users must highlight the file, copy it, go to it's new location, then paste the file into place. After this is done, voice over users still need to return to the original file, and delete it. This script takes care of that problem. It will move the file to it's new location without you having to copy then delete the original file.
Move File source
Move File compiled
I recomend downloading the source whenever possible, because then you can paste it into applications like spark to allow hotkey usage, or you can make your own compiled scripts, or stand-alone applications.
Due to some discussion on the voice over list, the following script will count the number of words in text edit. You can download the count words script below.
word count
You can compile your own scripts with this one. To count characters or paragraphs, replace the word words with characters or paragraphs, depending on what you would like to
count.
Note that this script counts the default document, so be aware of which document is the current one when using these scripts if you have multiple documents open. Also, be advised that web pages don't seem to count properly, so don't depend on the numbers if you're countint a pasted web page. You could of course convert it to text first before trying the count, but I don't know if that will help any.
Here is a version of text edit that has the character, word, line and paragraph counting built-in. It can be accessed by using the command-option-P key combination, or on the properties option under the file menu. Hope this helps some.
TextEdit.zip
If there are any additional scripts or applications you'd like to see here,
please let us know, and we'll see what we can do to get them placed here.