More and more, screen readers are being bundled with operating system distributions. Next month Anthony Loeff nonprofit worker is writing about digital tools for visually impaired Most legally blind people 81 percent do not use computers. Web browsers, word processors, icons and windows and email programs are just some of the applications used successfully by screen reader users.
Only a small fraction of this population, when compared to the sighted community, have Internet access.
The open source GNOME desktop environment long included Gnopernicus and now includes Orca. Indeed functionality remains limited compared to equivalent desktop applications, the major benefit is to increase the accessibility of said websites. A persons choice of screen reader is dictated by many factors, including platform and the role of organizations like charities, schools, and employers.
Recent versions of Microsoft Windows come with the rather basic Narrator.
The rest have some vision, from light perception alone to relatively good acuity. Experimental approaches in sensory substitution are beginning to provide access to arbitrary live views from a camera.
While Apple Mac OS X includes VoiceOver, a more feature-rich screen reader. Screen readers are a form of assistive technology potentially useful to people who are blind, visually impaired, or learning disabled, often in combination with other AT such as screen magnifiers. Linux distributions for the blind include Oralux and Adriane Knoppix. The latter developed in part by Knopper who has a visual impairment. A screen reader is a software application that attempts to identify and interpret what is being displayed on the screen. Later versions of Microsoft Windows include an Accessibility Wizard and Magnifier for those with partial vision, and Microsoft Narrator, a simple screen reader. Screen readers can be assumed to be able to access all display content that is not intrinsically inaccessible.
There are also open source screen readers, such as the Linux Screen Reader for GNOME and NonVisual Desktop Access for Windows.
Further, using a screen reader is, according to some users, considerably more difficult than using a GUI and many applications have specific problems resulting from the nature of the application. Almost 25 percent of those deemed legally blind, by any measure, have no vision. The movement towards greater web accessibility is opening a far wider number of websites to adaptive technology, making the web a more inviting place for visually impaired surfers. Screen reader choice is contentious: differing priorities and strong preferences are common. This interpretation is then represented to the user with text-to-speech, sound icons, or a braille output. The Macintosh OS also comes with a built-in screen reader, called VoiceOver. The console-based Oralux Linux distribution ships with three screen-reading environments: Emacspeak, Yasr and Speakup. The primary audience for such applications is those who have difficulty reading because of learning disabilities or language barriers. Access technology such as screen readers and Screen magnifiers enable the blind to use mainstream computer applications.
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Charles Darwin was one of the most traveled people in history. Can you imagine the commissions his travel agent earned?
How many times have you been held up trying to book a flight or hotel because… “our system is down”. Today, people have no patience for non-functioning travel agency software. In an age when people can book a flight on a cell phone modem, the most important asset a travel agency offers customers is personal service backed up by excellent travel agency software.
Travel Agency System - The Lion Sleeps tonight
Travel Agent system can mean the defense between a happy traveler and angry lion! Travel is a word of mouth business… a happy customer brings more business, an unhappy customer may cost a travel agency dearly. In today’s travel jungle, the unhappy customer is the lion a travel agency should most fear. Poor agency travel software may cause unhappy customers to tell their friends and even write damaging reviews on blogs and forums. the travel jungle the travel agencies with easy to use, efficient travel agency software sleep the soundest.
Travel Agency Software- Survival of the Fittest
Travel agency software that meets both present and future needs is vital. An agency’s products and customers are constantly changing and so must a travel agency’s travel agent software. The competition among competition in the travel and tourism field is fierce and so is Travel Agency Software a fiercely competitive field. Travel agencies offering personal as well as on-line reservations earn higher profit margins. Here are broad travel agent software guidelines for travel agency software needs:
Travel agency software - The Origin of Species
Very easy to use
Flexible commission facilities
Multi-lingual
Multi-currency
Full accounting capability
Full Internet integration
Extensive automated system
Total end to end solution
State-of-the-art technology
Proven reliability & stability
If Darwin was alive to day, his agent would have the best travel agency
system money could buy. It’s a jungle out there in the travel business, don’t underestimate the importance of your travel agency software.
Galor is a provider of the GILBOA Travel agency software, a total solution in one integrated travel
agent software and easy to manage travel agency
system.
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Want your images to have effects that’ll make it stand out more and show up well on every background tones? With Photoshop, you could achieve these effects for your images by its features that work on light and dark edges. These allow you to work on bringing out the best edges of your image - lighten or darken it, anyway you please to match on background tones and make it stand out more.
Through highlighting edges of your photo, you also highlight its details. The method of unsharp mask and others like the difference of Gaussians increase the change in brightness close to each step. This technique’s standard version adds a bright halo along the bright edge of the step and a dark halo along the dark edge. Depending on what effect you’d like for your image, there are advantages in just using one or the other. Using both may not do very much to improve your image, though.
There are several advantages of using any of the effects for the edges on real images. One is that it reduces interference between steps or detail and the haloes from other, nearby steps. Another thing, the light or dark haloes make other features of the image stand out better from the background.
Start doing this effect on your images using Photoshop by following several procedures:
1st step is duplicate the layer holding the image
2nd step - apply the conventional unsharp mask
3rd step - set the layer blending mode to “Darken” or “Lighten”.
However, you must understand that this only works for 8 bit per channel images - those that can be put into layers but it could function also on 16 bit per channel pictures with Optipix plug-in that allows direct selection of dark or light edges.
If you are not sure about which edge halo to use, there are general rules regarding such:
1. On light background tones, light edges don’t show up well and vice versa on dark ones.
2. The halo should lie on the background, not on the foreground. This technique helps the feature stand out without having to change its brightness values.
Sometimes the following rules are in conflict. It is necessary, then, to try several combinations to decide which is best. You can try both edges, light edges only, dark edges only. You can experiment since different regions of your image may call for different answers.
As you experiment for the best results, you’ll come to know that using unsharp mask filter may drive you to add too much additional local contrast. Understand that though adding some local contrast can make a bland image turn into a good one, adding too much creates a disaster. Take care not to add too much and make the image appear more like caricatures than photos. Remember that what looks best on the computer screen may not be the same in print since the process somewhat compresses contrast and blurs detail.
About The Author
Lala C. Ballatan is a 26 year-old Communication Arts graduate, with a major in Journalism. Right after graduating last 1999, she worked for one year as a clerk then became a Research, Publication and Documentation Program Director at a non-government organization, which focuses on the rights, interests and welfare of workers for about four years.
Book reading has always been her greatest passion — mysteries, horrors, psycho-thrillers, historical documentaries and classics. She got hooked into it way back when she was but a shy kid.
Her writing prowess began as early as she was 10 years old in girlish diaries. With writing, she felt freedom - to express her viewpoints and assert it, to bring out all concerns — imagined and observed, to bear witness.
For comments and inquiries about the article visit http://www.ucreative.com
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I have been hearing a lot about paired programming recently. I’ve done some research on the net about this to find out what exactly “paired programming” involves.
First off, here’s one of the better descriptions of Paired or Collaborative Programming from Wikipedia:
Description:
“Pair programming requires two software engineers to participate in a combined development effort at one workstation.
Each member performs the action the other is not currently doing: While one types in unit tests the other thinks about the class that will satisfy the test, for example.
The person that is doing the typing is known as the driver while the person that is guiding is known as the navigator. It is often suggested for the two partners to switch roles at least every half-hour.”
Pros/Cons
That are people for and against the idea for different reasons. The supporters of the idea argue that the paired programming
- increases software quality for various reasons.
- increases morale and team work
- speeds up the software delivery
- improves hands-on training of the junior programmers
- and spreads the code knowledge reducing the dependency on a single person for an area of the code.
Other people object that
- some people are more productive when they work on their own
- senior people may find it frustrating work with people who are still coming up to speed. Also, the new people may find it frustrating if the senior people have a tendency to take over the whole programming process.
- different people have different coding styles and there may be potential conflicts.
I have found that the biggest objection to this idea is the lack of scientific research into comparing the productivity/quality of paired programming and the traditional approach.
I must admit over 11 years of my programming, personally, I have produced better results when programming with another person. My second ever professional project never had any bugs from the testers or the field and I was working very closely with another programmer. Can it be a coincidence? Maybe I am more suited to working other people.
Future
Especially due to the following reasons, I see a lot of potential for the collaborative programming in the upcoming years:
- A very significant amount of software programming in the USA, UK and other countries have been outsourced to India, China, Russia and similar countries. One of the biggest challenges that have been well publicised is for the Western companies training up the outsourced partners and having enough control over the software that is being produced.
- Broadband technology has had a giant leap within the last few years. The analysts predict that the dial-up technology will be history very soon.
- Google is now trying to by-pass the whole dependency, created by Microsoft in the 80s, so that everything can be done over the internet without having to need anything but a browser.
So, the way I see it is that the paired programming can be and will used to have tighter relationships with the outsourced partners in the upcoming years.
Adil Akkus
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