> Date: Thu, 25 Nov 1999 08:14:57 -0000 > From: "Mark Tinley" <marktinley@...> > >Hi All, > >I have a friend who is blind and wants to use Windows '98 > >Does anyone know of a program that will give feedback about what is going >on, say something that will read the dialog boxes to him, so that he can >navigate the menus. He will mainly use the computer for Microsoft Word and >for the Internet. While this is a little OT for the LUG...I thought I'd post my reply here rather than a private mail to Mark in case any of you have friends or relatives who might find this useful. Check out http://www.hj.com/ who do a program called JAWS...It's expensive, but apparently the business when it comes to Windows access for the blind. Windows courses for the visually impaired are available at http://www.winguide.co.uk/ A WWW guide for the blind is available at http://www.vuw.ac.nz/~agsmith/847/resguide/coates/bvinz.htm This has heaps of info and links to other resources There's also a "beginners" guide for the blind at http://www.neric.org/capboces/tre/vig.html This site has links/text to a lot of apps and even reviews/rundowns on these progs. Adobe has a utility which converts PDF to text which can then be read by a text to speech prog at http://access.adobe.com/ AFAIK, IBM's ViaVoice has voice control of Windows and web browsing and will read web pages and any text for you...http://www-4.ibm.com/software/speech/ I think this should be enough to get started and hope it helps... Dave Bellingham Consultant, Musician, Webguy Author of the Wizoo guides to LAW/LAM Check out the Logic Audio FAQ at: http://www.ozemail.com.au/~oscwilde Home of the Emagic Logic Webring