Re: ConTeXt and the blind

[Bill McClain <wmcclain@salamander.com>]

On Thu, 15 Apr 2004 10:00:12 -0400
Alan Bowen <acbowen@princeton.edu> wrote:

> Thank you very much for the suggestions. I will explore pdftotext and 
> the Acrobat _Save As_ options. 

Another issue with these methods is that the header and footer
information on each page will be included, which could be irritating or
helpful, depending on the application.

> One of the problems for all_and perhaps
> it is insuperable_is the ability of such reading software to present 
> phrases in foreign languages and mathematical expressions.

I haven't done any XML writing, but I think that would be the superior
approach. If special elements of the text are tagged, then they could be
translated appropriately for the blind reader. 

I use a text-to-speech program for proofing some of my documents and
have found it helpful to filter the original text and emit a coded
version which makes it easy for the speech program to read, and easier
for me to understand. I'll have it say "quote", "endquote", "italics",
etc. I'm working from the Context source directly, but XML sources could
be used similarly, and there are lots of XML tools in the world. 

-Bill
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