[BRLTTY] Windows support

[Lee Maschmeyer]

Hi Bruno,

Brltty does not support speech in Windows. There may be plans for it but as 
far as I know nothing has been debugged. Note that I'm braille only so I 
wouldn't be the first to know even if it were debugged.

Note that you have to distinguish between the synthesizer, the part that 
actually does the talking, and the screen reader, the part that decides what 
to say. Brltty is its own screen reader but synthesizers need a separate 
program.

There are both hardware and software synthesizers that run in both Linux and 
Windows, but none of them are free. There are free software synthesizers 
that run in Linux but I don't think they do in Windows.

There are no screen readers that run in both Windows and Linux. Several 
commercial screen readers run in Windows. Several free and commercial screen 
readers run in Linux but thus far there is not a very robust free screen 
reader for Windows, though one or more are being developed.

The market leader in Windows screen readers is JAWS 
(www.freedommscientific.com) with a strong second (and loyal following) for 
WindowEyes (www.gwmicro.com). The market leader for Linux is the free 
Speakup; I don't remember the URL but the string Linux-speakup.org should be 
good enough for a Google search and might even be accurate. All of these 
support both speech and braille.

I hope that's enough to get you started and doesn't exceed the limits of my 
knowledge too much. :-)

Good luck,

-- 
Lee Maschmeyer
<lee_maschmeyer at wayne.edu>

"Be kind to your fur-bearing friends,
For a skunk may be somebody's brother."
     --Fred Allen