[BRLTTY] Windows support

[Michael Whapples]

On Mon, 2008-01-07 at 11:31 -0500, Lee Maschmeyer wrote:
> 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.
> Correction espeak (http://espeak.sf.net) is free (in both senses) and works in linux or windows (for both platforms the espeak API can be used, or in windows it can be used as a SAPI synth. Also in Linux it can be used either by gnome-speech or speech-dispatcher). I also believe festival might be possible to compile in windows as well as linux, but apps would need to use festival directly in windows as it doesn't have any way to be used as a sapi synth.

> 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.
> Speakup doesn't support braille, but works fine with brltty. Orca is a screen reader for the gnome desktop in Linux, and may feel more like some of the windows screen readers.
> I hope that's enough to get you started and doesn't exceed the limits of my 
> knowledge too much. :-)
> 
> Good luck,
>