Accessing Scholarly Content through FOSS based Assistive

Technology

Barnali Roy ChoudhuryConvenor, Open Access India

Librarian,AJC Bose CollegeKolkata-20

Open Access

Provision to access of publicly funded scholarly communication without any economic, legal, technical and social barrier.....

Main motto of OA....

Democratization of knowledgeAccess of information for all persons......

Available Scholarly Communications on the web

10,068 Journals1,778,530 Articles

Open DOAR

OATD

2,295,950 theses and Dissertations

DOAB

2404 Academic Peer-reviewed books from 79 publishers

BASE

More than 60 million documents from more than

3,000 sources

CORE

20,661,664 open Access articles

99.3 million documents

87% total no. of scholarly

documents on the web

Google Scholar

At a glance

Around 15% of the world’s population or estimated 1 billion people, live with disabilities. They are the world’s largest minority. (WHO)

80% of persons with disabilities live in developing countries. (UNDP)

The global literacy rate for adults with disabilities is as low as 3%, and 1% for women with disabilities. (UNDP)

In the OECD countries, students with disabilities in higher education remain under-represented, although their numbers are on the increase. (OECD)

Is there any way to Access Open access Scholarly communications???

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) can be a powerful tool in supporting education and inclusion for persons

with disabilities.

Free Open Source Software (FOSS)

Foss based Assistive Technology could help PWDs …

Screen Reader

On-screen Keyboard

Magnifier

Speech Recognition

Text to Speech

Symbols

Screen Reader

Screen reader is basically a software, helping Persons with Disabilities by Audio reading of Visual contents. It generally speaks aloud contents of a computer screen, including desktop icon labels and drop-down and tool bar menu items.

Screen readers and refreshable braille displays are one software package.

ORCA: Orca is a Linux based built-in screen reader software in Gnome package. It uses various combinations of speech, Braille and magnification to provide access to compliant applications.

ORCA

On-Screen Keyboard

On-screen keyboards can be used in place of a standard keyboard. It enable a user to select keys using a pointing device, such as a mouse, trackball, or touch pad.

GTkeyboard (http://opop.nols.com/gtkeyboard.html) is a on-screen, graphical keyboard.

GNOME Onscreen Keyboard (GOK) (http://www.gok.ca) is a on-screen, graphical keyboard that enables users to control their computer without having to rely on a standard keyboard or mouse..

Magnification

Virtual Magnifying Glass 3.6 : A A free, open source, screen magnifier, for Windows, Linux, FreeBSD and Mac OS X. Mouse scroll-wheel controls zoom factor.

GNOME Magnifier (gnome-mag) : The GNOME magnifier (gnome-mag) provides a command-line interface for standalone use, although its primary goal is to provide a set of magnification services for use by other client applications and assistive technologies, like Gnopernicus, Orca

KMag is a small utility for Linux to magnify a part of the screen. KMag is very useful for people with visual disabilities and for those working in the fields of image analysis, web development etc.

Ubuntu

Speech Recognition Speech Dasher: Speech Dasher is a novel interface for the input of text

using a combination of speech and gestures. A speech recognizer provides the initial guess of the user's desired text while a gesture-based interface allows the user to confirm and correct the recognizer's output. enabling text input by people unable to use a keyboard and by those using mobile devices.

Open Mind Speech: GPL based speech recognition tools and application. It is intended to collect speech data from "e-citizens" using the Internet.

Dspeech: TTS (Text To Speech) program with functionality of integrated ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition). It is able to read aloud the written text and choose the sentences to be pronounced based upon the vocal answers of the user. Allows you to save the output as a .WAV or .MP3 file and allows quick select icon of different voices, even combine them, or juxtapose them in order to create dialogues between different voices.

several different speech recognition utilities. http://www.trace.wisc.edu/world/computer_access/unix/unixshar.html.

Digital Talking Book

Reading with audio support

DAISY (Digital Accessible Information System Format)

• ANSI/NISO Z39.86-2005 (R2012) Specifications for the Digital Talking Book

• ANSI/NISO Z39.98-2012, Authoring and Interchange Framework for Adaptive XML Publishing Specification (NISO standard.

Daisy Pipeline The Daisy Multi Format Converter allows conversion of DAISY books between different formats.

AMIS is a multilingual software for reading books complatible with DAISY standards.

Emac speak: Emacspeak facilitate eyes-free access to daily computing tasks. It provides fluent spoken access to local and remote electronic information so that visually impaired users could access the wealth of information available on the Internet.

E-Pub open standard compatible e-book player.

Text to speech

Dspeech: Dspeech is a TTS (Text To Speech) program with functionality of integrated ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition) It is able to read aloud the written text and choose the sentences to be pronounced based upon the vocal answers of the user. It also allows to save the output as a .WAV or .MP3 file.

Gnopernicus: Automated f ocus tracking and full screen magnification, Gnopernicus aids low-vision Gnome users, and its screen reader features allow low-vision and blind users access to standard GTK+2 and Java-based GUI applications via speech and braille output.

WebbIE: WebbIE is a web browser for blind and visually-impaired people, especially those using screen readers. It comes with the Accessible programs, letting you access news and audio on the Internet in a simple and accessible way, allowing you to use podcasts, listen to the radio and read RSS and news with your screen reader or other access solution.

Symbols

• Concept Coding Framework (CCF) People with impaired communication, including difficulties to read or write, could use symbols as an alternative or complement to character based texts. The Concept Coding Framework (CCF) is being developed to overcome some difficulties of exchanging these alternatively coded messages over the Internet which is occurred due to the lack of standardized encoding schemes and common practices.

• EdWord and EdWeb: EdWord is a talking word processor that allows you to combine text with symbols. EdWeb is a talking web browser that can. display web pages as a combination of text and symbols

• FoxySymbols A firefox extension to provide symbol annotation to text content.

Miscellaneous….

Accessible Web Directory : We can explore the DMOZ web directory, a catalogue of good websites through this program . It's an alternative way to find web pages of interest.

GazeTalk is a keyboard layout , enables the use of an eye tracker with a low spatial resolution (e.g., a web-camera based eye tracker). It basically works on type-to-talk, writing, email, web – browser, Multimedia – player, PDF – reader, letter and word prediction, and word completion, speech output, can be operated by gaze, headtracking, mouse, joystick, or any other pointing device

Word Aid is a lexical word listing program with text-to-speech support that can aid the development of literacy.

Compatibility with OS

Word Processing AT toolsParameters

Create talking books in Word DaisY format

√ √

Add closed captions to videos in PowerPoint presentations

√ √

Use the keyboard to create a SmartArt graphic

√ Work in progress

Describe shapes, pictures, tables, and graphics for people who cannot see them

√ √

Create PDFs accessible by people with vision impairments

√ √

Zoom √ √

Hear written text aloud √ Not yet

Get the big picture with Full Screen Reading view

√ √

Spell and Grammar Checker √ √

Web Browser

Assistive Technologies

Keyboard Shortcuts and Navigation Yes Yes Yes

Font size changer Yes Yes Yes

Magnifier Yes Yes Yes

Speech Recognition Yes Yes Yes

Screen Reader Yes Yes Yes

Speech to TextYes Yes

Yes

Recommendations

• Ramification and implication of sustainable policy for PwD’s;

• Availability of documents in various forms like text, audio, video and also in Braille including Daisy and EPUB supported formats .

• Identification of right assistive technologies for the right persons.

Thanks for your kind attention!