• RT @ppatel Webaim is conducting a screen reader user survey o gather more definitive data on screen reader users: http://tinyurl.com/3rmwte # 2008/12/18
• News: Apple Releases Mac OS X 10.5.6 http://www.lioncourt.com/?p=250 # 2008/12/15
• Retweet: @cookiecrook BusinessWeek: Apple is greener than Greenpeace says. http://tinyurl.com/57v4fp # 2008/12/08
• Retweet: @vmwarefusion : Fusion 50% off today, one day only. Details: http://is.gd/9Gqi Coupon code "CyberMondayDeal" # 2008/12/01
• It's Thanksgiving Day in the United States. We're thankful for Apple's commitment to accessibility in their products. # 2008/11/27

Assistiveware has posted a pair of videos on the popular video sharing site YouTube.com demonstrating the iPod Nano 4G’s talking menu capabilities using both their French and British text-to-speech voices, available as part of their InfoVox iVox product for Mac OS X. This is a great way to see how the speaking menu feature works, as well as how well it works with foreign language voices.

Click here for a British-English demonstration.

Click here for a French language demonstration.

Au revoir!

Today, Apple released the fifth major update to its Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard operating system for Macintosh computers. 10.5.5 offers a wide array of fixes, as well as improvements to stability, reliability, security, and much more.

A note in the knowledge base article about 10.5.5 notes that the update "IMproves speech dictionary." This may be specifically useful to VoiceOver users, as well as to those who use the Mac’s built-in text-to-speech for other applications.

Frequently, accessibility improvements or fixes are found in these updates, though they may not have been documented in the release notes. If we find any such changes, we’ll report them here.

You can update your system through the "Software Update…" option in your system’s Apple menu, as usual. To read about the changes in this update, click here.

Lioncourt.com just spent a few minutes speaking with Apple’s Mike Shebanek about the new accessibility features announced in Apple’s products today. We’ve learned a bit about how the iPod Nano 4G’s speaking menus work.

Understandably, a device as small and compact as the iPod Nano hardly has the processing power to generate text-to-speech (TTS) on the fly…at least, not speech that would be up to Apple’s standards. Instead, Apple has come up with a unique way to offer speech on the iPod Nano’s menus.

Enter iTunes 8.

iTunes 8 is now fully accessible for both visually impaired Mac and Windows users. When paired with an iPod Nano 4G, iTunes taps into your Mac or PC’s processing power to generate tiny audio files for the various menus, artists, album, song titles, in your library. When you sync, that information is sent to your iPod Nano 4G.

The software uses the system voice settings in either Mac or Windows. The great thing about this is you will be able to purchase third-party voices, such as the Infovox iVox family of voices offered by Assistiveware, and use them on your iPod Nano 4G, including voices for foreign languages. Of course, most people will be very happy with Alex, the built-in TTS voice included in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.

Any changes to rate, volume, etc of your system voice will be respected and reflected on your iPod Nano 4G.

While the majority of features on the iPod Nano 4G are working with speech, there are some exceptions. Some games will not work, and the clock is not currently implemented. Mr. Shebanek stressed the fact that Apple wanted to get these features out to the visually impaired community now. They will move forward to perfect the system and listen to user feedback.

Today, Assistiveware released their first product under the Convenienceware banner, version 1.5 of their popular GhostReader.

GhostReader converts text to speech, both in real-time or sending the output to iTunes/iPod/iPhone compatible formats for easy playback on the go. It works with a variety of document formats, and can speak selected text in any application. It is available in multiple languages and includes high-quality voices.

This update offers new voices for Czech, Polish, Swedish and Finish languages, enhancements to previously available voices, a pronunciation dictionary, direct exportation of documents to iTunes at different encoding qualities, support for more document formats, and iTunes exports are now handled in the background. Other minor enhancements and bug fixes are also included.

GhostReader V1.5 is available as a free upgrade for existing users, or may be purchased for $39.95 US from Convenienceware.