A3: Accessibility for Students with Visual Impairments

Flatbed Scanner, OCR, Text-to-Speech Synthesis, & Close View

 

A. INTRODUCTION

One of the things that teachers do is type and retype information. When preparing original materials, there is no alternative to sitting down at the keyboard and hammering away. However, when simply retyping textual materials, there is an alternative -- OCR, optical character recognition. Another thing that teachers have need for is graphics. Sometimes graphic images can be taken from the WWW, but other times a particular image is desired from a textbook. But using a scanner, an image can be created. Both of these skills can be used to advantage for an additional task as well -- providing accessibility to textual materials for students with visual impairments.

In this project you will scan in one page of text with graphics using a scanner. You will then use OCR to create an MS Word document, and proof the document, making corrections of recognition errors. You will then show how students with limited visual acuity can view the document on screen using Close View. Finally, you will transfer your text file to Simple Text and show how its text-to-speech capability can be used to produce audible output for students with limited visual acuity.

 

B. PROCEDURE

Part 1: Flatbed Scanner

  1. Have your instructor introduce you to the flatbed scanner if necessary, and the OCR software.
  2. Set the scanning parameters to scan at approximately 300 dpi, recognition format, source, etc.
  3. Scan an image from a page with accompanying text.
  4. Save your file and turn in a copy to your instructor along with the original scanned page.

Part 2: Optical Character Recognition

  1. Have your instructor introduce you to the flatbed scanner and the OCR software.
  2. Set the scanning parameters to scan at approximately 300 dpi, recognition format, source, etc.
  3. Scan the above page for text.
  4. Once the page has been recognized, save this information to file as a Microsoft Word file, version 6.0.
  5. Using the Page Layout View, prepare a page in MS Word 6.0 with text and image, just like the original scanned page.
  6. Save your file and turn in a copy to your instructor along with the original scanned page.

Part 3: Text-to-Speech Synthesis Using Simple Text

  1. Go to Control Panels under the Apple menu and select Extensions Manager.
  2. Make certain that under the Extensions Manager list for Control Panels that the Speech control panel is "on" (an X is in the box to the left of the file name).
  3. Make certain that under the Extensions Manager list for Extensions (scroll down below Control Panels) that Speech Manager is also on.
  4. Restart your computer.
  5. Go to Control Panels under the Apple menu and select Speech. Make certain that option is set to speech, select the voice you want to hear and set the rate. Click on the speaker icon to hear a sample of the chosen voice rate.
  6. Go to the Control Panel (or Control Strip if present) and set the volume through Monitors & Sound.
  7. Copy and paste the text from your MS Word 6.0 document into a Simple Text document.
  8. From the Sound pull down menu in Simple Text program, select Speak All to hear text converted to speech.

Part 4: Close View

  1. On the computers in Moulton 307-B (and many of the other computers around the department) look for the application called Close View. Look for it under Control Panels.
  2. Once this program has been found, turn it on. (Note that his program can readily be toggled with the key combination option-command-K.)
  3. Adjust screen magnification and the appearance of the screen (black on white or white on black) though this control panel or through the quick key combinations shown on the control panel.
  4. Get to know how Close View works using the mouse as a view controller.

C. EVALUATION

This project will be judged upon the creation of a correct Word document that corresponds to the original scanned page. In addition, the student will demonstrate for the instructor how Close View can be used to visually enlarge the monitor image, and how that same page (same document) can be read aloud by the computer using Simple Text's speech synthesis.

 

Return to PHY 302 Syllabus COURSE CONTENT Section