Blind Access: Screen Readers and Magazines on audio-cassette

[OneSwitch]

Does anyone have any knowledge or links to BBC Micro screen reading software?

Also, does anyone here have any memories and ideally a recording of the VDU (Visually Disabled User Group) "Computer Talk" magazine from around 1985 on audio-cassette. It was run by David Calderwood and VDU members. There are also audio-book recordings of Micro User, I'd love to track down.

If you don't I hope you may find the articles of interest, with details of making games, Prestel, Ceefax and other methods accessible to pioneering blind computer users of the time.

Link to The Micro User June 1986 edition here. https://archive.org/details/eu_The_Micr ... 7/mode/2up
And some more chat on this at the TAVIP (previously BCAB) mailing list: https://groups.tavip.org.uk/discussion/msg/23409088/ with a glowing testimony of what the BBC Micro meant to one user there.

[OneSwitch]

Small update. I've tracked down a lead to VDU "Computer Talk" magazines dating from 1991 to 2009, when it was taken over. Hoping to receive some starter cassettes next week. I also had a lead to recordings of Micro User, which may still be stored at RNIB Newsagent (previously the National Talking Newspapers and Magazines).

[Pernod]

Does anyone have any knowledge or links to BBC Micro screen reading software?

I'm in contact with the owner of these:

We hope to have them imaged in the coming weeks, of particular interest are the Talking Screen Reader and Talking Wordwise discs.

[OneSwitch]

That's very exciting news, Nigel! Can't wait to hear if you have success getting images from those diskettes. Thanks for posting.

I have a BBC Micro and a Votrax. Does anyone have any advice on how to get this working?

Would Word Wise from 1982 be okay I wonder, or should I get Word Wise Plus?

Would another speech synthesiser be preferable to the Votrax I wonder? I know for the Apple II I needed to make a custom cable.

I heard something about software needing to be loaded into sideways RAM, in order to get the likes of text adventures read out aloud. This is something I know very little about. Any advice would be appreciated.

[OneSwitch]

With many thanks to Julia Cosgrove, I am now building a back-up of the Computer Talk magazine for the blind.

I have 1989's four editions preserved on MP3 here: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/cg3q3pvg ... j4i7f&dl=0.

Some fascinating stuff in there, I'll try to get a better synopsis of. Telesoftware shut-down, Eureka A4 computer for the blind with music composer (used by Stevie Wonder apparently), Dolphin, Votrax and Mimic speech synth systems. BBC Micro music... Reading Ceefax blind and more.

Could be some stuff in there that will assist people wanting to resurrect a blind accessible BBC Micro/Master work station.

[OneSwitch]

Does anyone have any knowledge or links to BBC Micro screen reading software?

I'm in contact with the owner of these:
Talking_floppies.jpg

We hope to have them imaged in the coming weeks, of particular interest are the Talking Screen Reader and Talking Wordwise discs.

Fingers still crossed for these disks getting preserved.

This thread may be of interest too: viewtopic.php?t=16483

[OneSwitch]

1989-1991 Computer Talk magazines on cassettes all preserved here: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/cg3q3pvg ... j4i7f&dl=0.

Some early speech recognition items are discussed, as well as the BBC Micro still being in use in 1991 by blind users for a variety of tasks, but things steadily moving to IBM PCs and a variety of gadgets.

Hopefully in 2024 I'll get a chance to borrow some disks and ROMs for preservation that were used for blind accessible Teletext, word processing, gaming etc. I'm hoping to get a recording of a BBC Micro working. If anyone has an Apollo Speech Synthesiser for the BBC Micro, I'd love to borrow/buy it if possible.

[OneSwitch]

I've been loaned some Diskettes for the BBC Micro/Master aimed at enabling Blind users. Hoping these can be backed-up and shared. There may be ROMs to go with this too.

If anyone has a Dolphin Speech Synthesiser or similar with or without cables, that they are willing to sell, please send me a message.

Blind accessible software, with braille labels.

Blind accessible software, with braille label. Close up.

[OneSwitch]

A batch of audio-cassettes to MP3 here of the Computer Talk magazine for blind computer users: https://www.oneswitch.org.uk/art.php?id=363

Buried in there, BBC Micro Golden Brown renditions, a speech synth trying to sing the 12 days of Christmas, battling power-cuts at tech demos, using speech readers with Teletext for news and more.

If anyone has any 1980s cassettes, including of Micro User transcribed to tape, please get in touch.

[tricky]

I have mentioned this before, but I used to help a blind accountant who could only use one arm. I set some stuff up and wrote a few utils like sticky keys etc.
I don't have any of it now and I don't remember which screen reader he had, but it was external and he could control it from the keyboard to read lines or cells iirc.
Not what you are looking for, but some adventure games can be used without a screen by directing the text output through the computer concepts text to speech ROM and on to the Beeb's internal speech chip.

[OneSwitch]

Nice one, Tricky. Great stuff.

I had a message from a guy called Roy Warner:

"The Toucan was a talking unit about the size of a thick laptop that could be connected to the RS232 serial port It had a standard Din plug at one end and a multi-pin connector on the Toucan. It had a speaker and a mini ear phone socket It was
rechargeable and mains powered by a large transformer. I carried it around in a shoulder bag to and from my home to different Further Education Colleges for GCE & A level classes...

I remember Football Manager was a standard game I loved to play [using a screen reader]. St Dunstables’s had some blasting games. However I used it mainly to write programs, as a word processor and to store names address & phone details of friends and local traders I used it with the BBC B and a dot matrix printer to write letters and course work and sitting exams at various Colleges."

And from Andre Louis saying they played Level 9's Lords of Time using speech and touch-typing. He also used the method you suggested of printing the screen to the speech synth without needing a custom screen-reader. I would think a screen-reader would be best though if working well. @flaxcottage currently has some of these discs. Hopefully we can make some sense of them.

There was definitely a lot of fantastic stuff for the Beeb across all abilities. So much today sits on its shoulders.

Perkins Brailler and Votrax

[tricky]

There was also the micro writer, which was useful for the chap I was talking about as using the keyboard was very cumbersome.

[OneSwitch]

With huge thanks to @flaxcottage and the Cosgroves, I now have a batch of diskettes preserved, including a range of blind accessible games. These include a pinball game by Yakety Yak Software for the Blind, written by (the brilliant) David Calderwood in 1983. I'll get more up soon. Some of this stuff will run, although I get the impression most of it really needs an external speech synth attached. That's the next job. More to follow.

[BigEd]

Glad to hear you have more software preserved. I'm curious as to what kind of interface the pinball offers...

[OneSwitch]

The pinball game is quite fascinating to try to get your head around. I believe it should have a speech synthesiser attached, where the screen text output is constantly dumped to the RS423 port (would you do that by typing VDU2 first, perhaps, then running the game?).

That could/should make the game playable entirely without sight. I have a Votrax, but I don't know how to get it working on the BBC Micro. Looks like I'd need a custom cable and VDU2 / some other method.

Here are most of the blind accessible games:

BR05.DSD

Speech Games "DISC-2GAMES" including pinball.

(400 KiB) Downloaded 6 times

BR04.DSD

Speech Games

(400 KiB) Downloaded 5 times

I'd be very interested if anyone could get these working with their BBC Micro / Master with a physical external speech synth.

One or two of the games work with Superior Software's Speech, but I think that would be too slow for the blind accessible action/arcade games.

Here's some of the info from the game:

PINBALL GAME: 2nd DECEMBER 1983:
YAKETY YAK SOFTWARE FOR THE BLIND BY DAVID CALDERWOOD (pictured previously in this thread).

PLUNGER (press key 1 HARD TO key 5 SOFT)
SPACE BAR = FLIPPERS (you will be told when you land on them)
Z = NUDGE THE BALL LEFT
/ = NUDGE THE BALL RIGHT

TABLE LAYOUT:

5 BALLS - 5 LANES and you need to memorise the layout. But there's a low tone that indicates the left-most lane, and the tones raise to a high-pitch in steps to the highest tone being the right-most lane. If it's the lowest LEFT tone or highest RIGHT tone, if you don't nudge the table, your ball will eventually drain. You want to keep nursing the ball to be away from the extremeties and not in the middle lane for too long.

OUTER-LEFT LANE2: 2 rollers, spot target and drain.
INNER-LEFT LANE1: bumper, flipper and drain,
MIDDLE LANE: roller, catapult, bumper, black hole (randomiser), drain
INNER-RIGHT LANE1: bumper, flipper and drain,
OUTER-RIGHT LANE2: 2 rollers, spot target and drain.

Pinball table layout to memorise.

Score more than ten thousand for a replay and a new mystery table layout.

[BigEd]

Thanks for the info!

[OneSwitch]

Thought this short video clip of a lad using a Brailler, BBC Micro and Votrax may be of interest to some:

https://youtu.be/vezIdwbOfbA?si=OxHzhGYssPFTXFkI&t=1026

1985 Brailler, Votrax and BBC Micro. Young blind boy using.