Amsterdam – 10 October 2007 – AssistiveWare® today announced the release of VisioVoice® 1.1. VisioVoice enhances access to Mac OS X for people with vision impairments through a system-wide talking interface and typing echo, text and image zoom windows, large cursors as well as a document and selection reader. VisioVoice provides naturally sounding voices through the included license of Infovox iVox for one language of choice. VisioVoice can also convert text, Word, PDF, HTML and RTF documents to audio files and iPod and iPhone-ready audiobooks. The new version of VisioVoice will be demoed at the Closing The Gap conference next week.
VisioVoice 1.1 new and improved features:
- Now provides a typing echo as the user types into any application.
- The text zoom window now updates as the user types.
- Talking interface enhanced to work not only with the mouse but also with full keyboard access.
- Talking interface and typing echo support was added for Pages and Keynote (iWork ’08 and later).
- Improved support for reading text in Safari with VisioVoice’s talking interface.
- Improved PDF import with smart-stripping of end-of-line hyphens.
- Japanese localization was added as well as a Japanese translation for the Mac OS X 10.4 version of Apple’s VoiceOver screen reader for blind users. Use with DTalker 3.0 Japanese voices.
- Enhanced compatibility with VoiceOver: if the included Infovox iVox voices are used with VisioVoice, VoiceOver will no longer cut-off speech generation.
- Now Leopard-ready.
- Many other improvements and fixes.
Website: Full Press Release For VisioVoice 1.1 Release
ATMac comment: I have been beta testing this new VisioVoice for a while now and it’s a great step up from the 1.0 release. I was going to write more but it’s 11pm here in Australia and if I fall asleep before I post this then the cat will probably finish it while I’m asleep and who knows what will happen then?
Oh, and the new version of VisioVoice is a free upgrade for all registered users.
Goodnight.
- ATMac
Hi,
I subscribe to ATMac & have shared it with others. Is VisoVoice better than VoiceOver? Does the computer follow the ibeam when typing? I use the zoom feature of VoiceOver, but it only follows in TextEdit & Safari on my Mac. I use OX 10 Leopard with a Power PC processor. It is so frustrating to try to use NeoOffice (the open source version of MS Office) and have the view jump around so I can’t see what I’m doing in tables. Try to get your tax info. ready this way!
FYI I have a mystery romance novel available called The Purging Fire from Publish America. It’s under the link 4 Elements Mystery on my website.
@Marlene: VisioVoice and VoiceOver are not really comparable – they are complimentary and do different things, so I wouldn’t say one is “better” than the other because the question doesn’t make sense. The bad news, though, is that VisioVoice’s zoom will not follow the ibeam cursor either. Not having an option for zoom to follow the typing cursor is a major flaw in Apple’s Zoom at the moment, I am really hoping they get on top of that because I find it a problem too.