I’ve been hearing about a funding project for something called Dictation Bridge, which is supposed to make it so people using NVDA or whatever screen-reader can hear what they’re typing when using dictation software like Dragon. I thought it was a cool idea, and meant to send them some dough. Then they made a promo for how it worked, comparing it to how things currently work, and I really want to send them some dough. First, I didn’t realize that not even J-Say would do what they’re talking about, or maybe it does, but only for JAWS. Second, I assumed stupidly that if you were wearing headphones, the screen-reader noise wouldn’t get picked up by the dictation software. But maybe it somehow still gets it, and if so, gross! I can’t even imagine using dictation and a screen-reader in the current setup. Yuck!
Anyway, check out the promo, and if you feel so inclined, visit the site and maybe throw them some money…if you can figure out where to send it. For some reason I can’t understand, they didn’t post the donation link. As soon as I find it, I’ll include it here.
That looks really cool. Hopefully one day we’ll be able to contribute to this mysterious crowdfunding endeavor of theirs. Seriously, who records a demo like that, sets up a website, asks for contributions and then doesn’t tell you where to send ’em? Programmers they may be, but marketers they most certainly are not.
Seriously though, what I wouldn’t have given for something like this 22 years ago when my arm was broken. Sure would have beat the hell out of having to braille 1-handedly and basically not be able to type because my cast made it hard to move my fingers.
And you didn’t even know there was such a thing as a one-handed brailler. Seriously, I thought I might die when I mentioned such a device.
No, no one at the school for the blind bothered mentioning that such a thing existed. Assuming it wasn’t invented sometime after 1994/95 when I needed it, I should head back there and do harm to some folks, hahaha.
It was in fact invented before 1994/1995. Bitches need to be killed!
Indeed they do. Do you wanna call Bell or should I? Oh…wait…sorry. Never did quite get over that reflex.
How was it that you came to find out about these things anyway? Like if the school people knew of them and didn’t tell me, I’m seriously pissed because between not being able to do anything efficiently and having to miss so much class because of follow-ups and the eventual we didn’t set your arm right and we’re gonna have to break it again surgery, I got pretty behind on things…especially math. Math was the worst. Thank Christ I read with my left hand and broke my right arm. That would’ve been an disaster. I’m going to hope that they just didn’t have 1-handed braillers. Yeah, that’s what I’m gonna do.
No I didn’t know about it from the school. It was from my days in Renfrew. It was when my old teacher was working with that other guy who was blind and got pasted by a car and half his body was paralyzed. I guess half a body paralyzed is a more compelling reason to go searching for a one-handed brailler than temporarily immobilized limb, but still. The thing existed, and I don’t think they built it themselves. It looked like quite the gizzmified contraption as Brad would say.
Oh look, a description of just such a device.
That bit where it says developed in 1951 had better be referring to their braillers in general, because otherwise I may start 2-handedly throwing things.
Not sure if you’ve seen this, but the Dictation Bridge people finally got around to putting up the announcement they mayhaps should’ve launched with. Not sure if you want to do a whole new post or just update this one, but what they’re telling us now is definitely much more info rich than what we had.
For some reason they still haven’t launched their funding drive, which is kinda baffling. Wouldn’t you want to hit people up for money when they’ve just heard your promo and are theoretically all excited about it? I really hope they have a plan, preferably not a dumb one. There’s so much potential for greatness here and I’d hate to see it go to waste because of bad promotion.