July 13, 2008

Brian Hartgen

J-Say, a voice-input program, is now offering a great way for individuals who are blind or have low vision to label text in documents or Web pages, and then easily locate it later using bookmarks.

Introduction

Over the past couple of decades, screen-reading manufacturers have developed a variety of products to help visually impaired people read Web pages and word–processed documents. But there is still work to be done. At the end of the day, "access" is only as good as its speed and ease-of-use. This is especially true when it comes to the business world. In order to effectively compete in the job market, we need to be as technologically astute as our sighted colleagues.

J-Say technology (which links JAWS for Windows and Dragon NaturallySpeaking to form a hands-free voice input/output device) has been discussed in past columns and is proud to add a new offering to its arsenal: J-Say Bookmarks.

What are J-Say Bookmarks?

Activated by voice or the keyboard, J-Say Bookmarks allow you to mark text within a Microsoft Word document or a Web page, and jump to it quickly. You can set up to ten bookmarks per page. And you have a choice of specifying two different bookmark types:

• Position Capture bookmarks record the precise character and line position of the cursor.
• Text Capture bookmarks store the text contained on a line.

Using a bookmark is as simple as saying or typing, “Go to bookmark x” (where “x” represents one through to ten). And there you are.

There is also a command called Speak, which allows you to hear your bookmarked text spoken, without your cursor position moving from its current location.

What happens when a bookmark is created?

You have complete control over what happens when a bookmark is moved, through the Bookmarks Manager. When you set your bookmark, that character, word, line, sentence, or paragraph can be spoken, or the remainder of the document or Web page can be read from the cursor position. If the bookmark being used is located on a Web page, an additional option called Activate Element will open a hyperlink automatically. J-Say can be set to automatically highlight a bookmark once a Web page loads. In addition, you can choose to apply a bookmark to an entire Web site domain, or just to a Web page. The central repository for the management of bookmarks is found within the Bookmark Lists. Bookmark Lists can be renamed to suit your filing needs. All you have to do to activate one of the bookmark lists is to select a document or Web page you've previously stored, and it will automatically be launched.

How can bookmarks be used?

Everyone will use bookmarks differently, of course, but they can be particularly helpful when using Web sites, such as news sites that include multimedia along with the text of an article. While this rich environment is appealing to most readers of online newspapers, it can be overwhelming to Web surfers who are blind. Most news Web sites provide a link to a simple text version of their articles (usually called “printer friendly page” or something similar). If this particular link is always in the exact same place on the Web site, locating it with one of the Position Capture bookmarks will work perfectly. But what if that link appears in different locations on the page, as can be the case? A Text Capture bookmark will still find it!

J-Say Pro 6.1, containing Bookmarks, will be available at the end of this month.

About the author

Brian Hartgen is blind and the Product Development Manager of T&T Consultancy Ltd. in the UK. He started his foray into the accessibility technology arena over 25 years ago, by developing computer games for blind people.