Skype as a Tool for the Blind
As the eager reader of your Skype stories, I’ve been trying to take the time to highlight the unique anecdotes that pass through my inbox. Today I received the following from Mike Calvo in Florida, the CEO of a technology company called Serotek:
” I work with our developers and support staff on Skype and we love it. “So what!” you say? Well we are all blind, located in different parts of the world, and I have never spent more than a couple of hours in person with 1 or 2 of my staff. I have people on my team that I have been working with for years online that I have never met in person. We do everything via Skype. We even train, demo, and support new users via Skype with our remote control feature.
We have programmers in the states, and in other parts of the world all connected with Skype. We have worked together to develop a product called FreedomBox that allows blind people to use the Internet. We have also developed a product called System Access that has the best support for Skype accessibility of any blindness product on the market. I also use SKype with System Access on my U3 enabled Flash drive and
it’s great! We love Skype and can’t imagine a world without it!”
I’m one of those FreedomBox users and help others even though, the learning curve for FreedomBox and System Access is far less than that of other screen reading and access technology. And, Skype works beautifully. Blind people are able to work so well with it because the audio sound quality is very good. Besides, if both talking parties have Skype, there’s no telephone directory hurtle to have to get over as a blind person. Smile. Skype is certainly not limited to the blind but it opens up a new world to them. Let us hope that the world can Always Talk For Free! with Skype.
I am a school teacher in New Hampshire. In January, we are doing a 3 month project on Miracles, Mysteries, and Myths. I have a whole section on the Miracle worker and would love to set up a Skype call with a blind person if that is possible from the classroom. Anyone have any ideas?
I am a registered blind guy who has just started using Skype. Its great to be able to call anyone with Skype on their PC free of charge but I’ve noticed that the Skype help topics don’t seem to have any material to help users of speech access technology (such as Jaws for Windows). I’m surprised at this and think it should be rectified. Also I’d be interested to hear from other blind Skype users.
Cheers
I’m a sighted person who uses Skype for podcasting, which is wonderful except for one thing. My co-host is blind. Up to now, I’ve connected to his land-line phone using SkypeOut. Great for ordinary conversations, but a maddening inconvenience for podcasting, as the voice quality on his end is vastly inferior to that on my end–we also run into problems such as stray noises, echoes, and cracking or popping on the line as we’re talking, and that’s come close to ruining many a podcast session.
It would be easier if he could use Skype himself, as it would eliminate the above problems. But he’s unsure if he’d be able to use it because of his blindness. He has, I assume, JAWS to turn text to speech. I gather from the above blog entry that he would need additional software as well to make Skype accessible to him–or would he simply be able to use it as is, with the voice software he already has? If anyone has any suggestions, please contact me at rnewstead@sbcglobal.net. Thank you.
Time for the praise to stop.
I’m legally blind. I can get by with custom colour settings and larger fonts, and am thankful that I’m not quite at the stage where I need to use a screen reader.
Trying to use Skype, for me, is extraordinarily painful. It doesn’t honour my colour schemes, or it does in some places where doing so actually make things even worse (i.e. honouring my black background, but not my foregroun dcolour, instead using their own foreground colour that is also black.)
It’s really, really horrible. Once I go through the pain and hell of getting a contact added and a call established, it works great, it really is a wonderful thing, it’s just really got some headway to make in teh accessibility area.
It’s just another case of a new technology blocking out blind people because the designers/developers don’t give any real thought to accessibility.
Let’s hope this can be fixed, and fixed soon. I won’t hold my breath, though.
And the tagline “Take a deep breath” is apt. Deep breathing is a good calming method, because trying to work with this horrible colour scheme that’s forced upon me makes me want to hit things/people.
I’m also congenitally blind.
At first, thought of Skype as an afterthought.
However, as the version unmber went up, and more features became available, i um, kinda, saw daylight, lol…
My latest fun in the Skype world is Pamela.
Wow, she’s cool; taking voice mail, offering to record a call, and other ideas i haven’t tried yet.
BTW, if you read this post and are curious to reach me on Skype, well there’s my name at the bottom.
To reach me off skype, send email to either:
imcoocoo@gmail.com
or
jbratcher4@tampabay.rr.com
ok,
I noticed one other reader who is legally blind. well guess what, as of 2 weeks ago, I am total. I use a screen reader and its painfully obvious that I can’t use some functions of skype via keyboard only on OS X (snow leopard). I can’t seem to find the dialog that allows me to change command keys and I have no way to answer a call via keyboard. I have to find out who it is and call them back using the menu!
I have posted in the forums seeking help (see keyboard navigation for the blind) and I have gotten ZERO responses. no help at all. if this is such a great product, how come skype made it so damned difficult for me, a blind mac user, to use?
if any devs are reading this, TAKE NOTE! it is not good enough.