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Filed under: Office, Microsoft, Open Source

MS Word plugin will convert text to audio for the blind

PlexTalk DAISY PlayerMicrosoft plans to launch a free plugin next year for Microsoft Word 2003 and 2007 next year that will add a "Save as DAISY" feature to the word processor.

What's DAISY? It stands for Digital Accessible Information System, and it's essentially a format for converting text to speech. This isn't one of those parlor tricks for getting your computer to say "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that." Rather, DAISY is an open format used by computer programs and hardware devices like the PlexTalk PTN1 that blind people can use to listen to books and text.

Microsoft plans to host the Open XML to DAISY XML translator on open-source project management site SourceForge, meaning independent developers will be able to look at the code and come up with their own translators and plugins.

[via CNet]

Filed under: Internet, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Windows Mobile, Symbian, Palm, Web services, Google

Google Accessible Search

Google Accessible Search

Google has released a new Labs experiment called Google Accessible Search. Billed as a tool that prioritizes the typical Google search results by their usability, Accessible Search sorts results based on the simplicity of their page layouts and how gracefully the page degrades (such has removing ads and turning off images).

This tool isn't just for those who are tired of blinking Flash ads, or minimal, one-column design enthusiasts. T.V. Raman, who posted this on the Google Blog, can't see, and is a research scientist who is working on this project at Google. While Accessible Search is still in its early experimental stages, it definitely looks like Google is making good progress on an important tool for allowing even more people benefit from the World Wide Web.

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