Somethings is apparently stopping my Reviews getting through to the list.
So trying again
Review Speak On and the RNIB News Agent Service
I have not been the biggest fan of Speak On in the past but decided to
have another look at it after I saw it also now acted as a Front End for
the RNIB
Newspaper Service.
You need to be a subscriber to either the RNIB News Agent EText or audio
Service in order to access the service through Speak On.
I have only been using the service through Speak On for 24 hours but
despite an a very confusing start I think that Speak On, whilst not
perfect by any
means, is now a valuable option for accessing RNIB News Agent content.
The below is an initial assessment and more experiencd users can correct
or clarify what I have picked up on admittedly quite limited usage.
Speak On is a self voicing application so if you are using Jaws then
your Eloquence voice or any other Jaws voice will not be available to
use. The application
loads using ESpeak, familiar as the default voice for NVDA. you can
adjust the synthetiser and voice setup in Global Settings within the
application.
You can use any standard Sapi TTS Voice you have on your system. In
addition you can download a partner application called speech hub,
which adds some
extra voice options for both Speak On and NVDA. For myself I loaded my
Sapi 5 version of Eloquence as this is my preferred reading voice.
Personally I
would like the option to turn Self Voiccing off and allow an option to
use your main Screen Reader for interaction with the app but there may
be technical
reasons why this is not possible.
The main window is divided into a menu of “Task”. These include options
which will be familiar to past users of Speak On, including Podcasts,
eText, Audio
Books, Music, and CD. There is also an option, new to me, to act as a
Front end for the Tune In Radio app. This worked well but I wil review
this elsewhere.
Confusingly there is absolutely no reference to the advertised RNIB
Newspaper service and looking in the Manual initially did not revieal
instructions
for how to show these when this service was described.
However essentially you have to go to tools in Speak On menu and find
the option to install Plugins. This will open up a list of available plugins
including Plugins for the RNIB Newsagent eText and Audio Services. I
installed the eText service.
Once the plugin is installed you will see an additional task in your
Speak on Main Task Menu which corresponds to the RNIB eText service.
Press enter on that and then go back to local setting, by pressing the
alt key and then enter your RNIB Newsagent user name and password.
The interface across Speak ON takes some getting used to – for example
after entering your user name and password you would normally expect to
tab to an
OK button or be able to simply press the enter key. Instead you have to
bring up the menu again with the alt key and find OK in that menu.
Once you get used to this different approach it feels less
idiosyncratic, I found across the program that the application key is
your friend when you appear
to be stuck. The application key normally provides what useful options
are available anywhere in the program.
Once your user name and password are in the program you have pretty easy
access to all the Newspaper and Magazine content on the RNIB site.
The media is available in a tree view where you simply press the right
and left arrow to move to the relevant levels, and up and down arrow to
review
different title options. This is a very strong and useful aspect of the
program as it is infinitely easier and smoother than clicking on all the
links
you need to traverse on the main RNIB site.
Once you find the Publication title you want you can bring up the
application key and add it to your favourites which makes accessing this
publication
even easier the next time you load the program.
Pressing right arrow will open a list of documents available under each
application. Pressing enter on the document downloads the Newspaper or
Magazine
for reading in a bespoke “Media Player.
Again the techniques for reading are slightly unusual and need a little
getting used to but genrally worked OK.
Essentially using the left and right arrows navigates you through levels
which include Section 1level , Section level 2, Article, All Levels,
Paragraph,
lines, Sentence, Word and Character.
Pressing the up and down arrow on Section, Article, all levels etc will
move you through those level heading. Within larger article an option
to navigate
by 50 lines is also provided.
However as soon as you reach the Paragraph level pressing the down and
up arrows will start the reading not of headings but of the actual
Newspaper or
Magazine article text.
Generally this worked very well. Pressing Enter also puts the Player
into read all continuous reading mode
and pressing enter again pauses it.
I was initially confused as to how I could move from one publication to
another. There appeared no close function. Eventually by bringing up
the navigation
menu I found that there was a sub menu to that called “move to my own
media in the library”. I initially rejected this as the menu to use as I
thought
this only refered to my own media stored on my PC but actually the
complete opposite was the case and pressing enter on this returned me to
the main RNIB
list of Publication Categories ready for loading another magazine or
newspaper. This could certainly be made a little clearer.
I have subsequently found that pressing F4 as a shortcut
is the quickest way to navigate to the main RNIB library of
publications again.
All the publications you read are automatically downloaded also as epub
documents in the MySpeakonmedia Folder in your User folder on your C Drive.
app if necessary.
User Folder called MySpeak On Media.
There are also options to archive articles as separate text files. and
also to view the Newspaper in the original RNIB website which I have not
tried yet.
In genral once you get used to the idiosyncratic interface of the
program, it actually worked very well.
. The user documentation needs a serious overhaul, too often when you
look something up as a beginner you are immediately told to go and look
elsewhere
in the documentation for the information you need, spinning across
several pages in the help gets very confusing for a beginner.
Despite that I think this is a valuable tool for easy access to the RNIB
content and the developer should be given credit for providing a free
option to
assist us with this task. I think the developer should receive our
thanks for the Favourites feature in particular, as this makes it
extremely efficient
and attractive to access the content we need easily. Rather than wading
through all the content on the RNIB site I have a simple menu of the
thihngs I
want to read regularly. I think I will be using the service more
regularly with this application.
If this model of accessing remote content could be extended in a way
similar to the RNIB site to accessing web content on other sites say
Project Gutenburg
for eText, and LibriVox for Audio Books this program could be
transformed into a must have application for all Visually Impaired
users of Windows.
Perhaps the Webbie Gutenburg downloader and reader, which seems to
have fallen a little by the wayside could be now integrated as a almost
ready plugin
into SpeakON, giving it a new lease of life amongst this suite of other
media tools.
David Griffith
the appli
.
Sent from
Mail
for Windows 10On 12/12/2016 08:12, John Gurd wrote:
Hi David
Your review on Speak On doesn't seem to have come through to the list. Can you
repost it as I would really like to read it.
Thanks
John
-----Original Message-----
From: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of ;
David Griffith
Sent: 11 December 2016 14:10
To: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [access-uk] Update on Review on Speak On and RNIB NewsAgent Plugin
I am not sure if the review I posted on list arrived yesterday but I thought I
should in fairness add a quick clarification on my genrally positive review of
the valuable ability of Speak On to now act as a convenient Front end for the
RNIB Newsagent service.
In my early review I regretted the apparent lack of a read all feature at
article level whilst reading Newspaper or Magazine.
I have today discovered that Speak On does actually have a read all
command which though slightly unusual works very well.
Basically pressing enter whilst in the NewArticle will start the TTS
reading the article in its entirety, pressing enter again will pause the
reading.
This allied to the previously discovered ability to nabigate by sections
and Articles, allied to reading by Paragraph, Line, sentence word and
Character provides all that you can reasonably expect from an eText Reader.
I also failed to mention the capacity of the program to allow selection
and copying of text, and the ability to export each article to a
separate article in a text formatted file in a special archive folder.
Every document you read in the player is also automatically downloaded
into a current reading folder in its original ePub format if you want to
access the material outside of the reader.
So basically as I get used to the player I am now enjoying it even more.
David Griffith
** To leave the list, click on the immediately-following link:-
** [mailto:access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe]
** If this link doesn't work then send a message to:
** access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
** and in the Subject line type
** unsubscribe
** For other list commands such as vacation mode, click on the
** immediately-following link:-
** [mailto:access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=faq]
** or send a message, to
** access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the Subject:- faq
** To leave the list, click on the immediately-following link:-
** [mailto:access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe]
** If this link doesn't work then send a message to:
** access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
** and in the Subject line type
** unsubscribe
** For other list commands such as vacation mode, click on the
** immediately-following link:-
** [mailto:access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=faq]
** or send a message, to
** access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the Subject:- faq