Fw: Alternative Browsers / Test Software

----- Original Message -----
From: "Matthew Smith" <[email protected]>
To: "WAI Interest Group" <[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, December 21, 2002 5:40 PM
Subject: Alternative Browsers / Test Software



Hi All

For what it's worth, I have thrown together a very, very basic voice
user agent (UA).  I did this for three reasons:
1) To have a "stupid" UA which speaks what it's given - lets me hear
whether my work makes sense when spoken.
2) To provide a speech interface for a kiosk system that I am working
on.
3) To allow me to understand the issues involved when designing a
mechanical system that can interpret XHTML content.

The UA is written in Perl, with a Tk User Interface. It operates by
retrieving a page, converting the XHTML (I only designed it to test my
own stuff) to the Sable markup language, using XSLT and then passing the
result to the Festival Text-to-Speech (TTS) system.

This programme is *not* designed for "surfing the Web"; links are
announced, but there is no user interaction once reading has started.

For clarity, I use the Mbrola en1 male voice for page titles, headings,
etc., and the Mbrola us1 female voice for content.  Festival's default
voice kicks in for all the tag conversions that I haven't included in
the stylesheet.

The functionality can be changed/expanded easily, simply by
changing/adding rules to the stylesheet.

If anyone would find this useful, please contact me off-list.  The
software is written for a Linux/Unix environment, but could probably be
converted to other Operating Systems by those with the savvy.

Cheers

M

--
Matthew Smith
IT Consultant
Kadina, South Australia