Self-voicing

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A self-voicing application is an application that provides an aural interface without requiring a separate screen reader. Self-voicing applications can be an important form of assistive technology, useful to those who have difficulty reading or seeing.

A prominent group of self-voicing applications are talking web browsers. Traditionally, talking web browsers have been specially created, as was the case with:

pwWebSpeak, originally developed by The Productivity Works in Princeton, New Jersey (now obsolete)
Simply Web (also now obsolete)
Home Page Reader (HPR) from IBM (recently discontinued)
Connect Outloud from Freedom Scientific

A more recent trend has seen the self-voicing capabilities added to mainstream web browsers with free add-ons. In 2004 Opera Software created a self-voicing and speech-recognition extension for the Windows version of their web browser^[1]. And in 2005 Charles L. Chen devised Fire Vox, an extension that adds speech capabilities to the Mozilla Firefox web browser on Mac, Windows, or Linux.^[2]

A second important category are broader self-voicing applications that function as what T. V. Raman calls "complete audio desktops"^[3], including editing, browsing, and even gaming capabilities. These include his own Emacspeak enhancement for Emacs and Karl Dahlke's Edbrowse.