VisioVoice 1.0.1 review

Download
by rbytes.net on

VisioVoice is an application that enhances access to Mac OS X for blind and vision impaired users.

License: Demo
OS: Mac OS X
File size: 3300K
Developer: AssistiveWare
Buy Now
Price: $185.00
Updated: 03 Oct 2006
0 stars award from rbytes.net


VisioVoice is an application that enhances access to Mac OS X for blind and vision impaired users. It adds multilingual support to Apple's excellent VoiceOver screen reader technology for a number of languages, as well as providing several other speech and vision related features to enhance access to Mac OS X. VisioVoice comes bundled with Infovox iVox, which provides the best voices ever on the Mac in a wide range of languages.

VisioVoice makes using the computer easier, more efficient and more fun, because of the high quality voices, its easy to use text reader, the powerful zoom functionality, the large cursors and its ability to convert text to audio files and iTunes tracks.

Here are some key features of "VisioVoice":
Document Reader: VisioVoice includes an advanced document and selection reader with play, pause, stop, rewind and fast forward functions. As it speaks, it can highlight the spoken words or sentences. Use it to listen to the selection in any application or to Text, Word, HTML, PDF and RTF documents.
Creation of audio and iTunes files: VisioVoice can convert Text, Word, HTML, PDF and RTF documents to audio files or iPod-ready iTunes tracks.
Large cursors: VisioVoice includes large, customizable cross-hair and target cursors that make using the Mac much easier for vision impaired users.
Image Zoom: VisioVoice includes an Image Enlarger that makes it easier to see what is on the screen. Unlike the built-in zoom functionality of Mac OS X, which zooms the entire screen, the Image Enlarger window just zooms the area around the cursor, so that you do not loose sight of the "big picture".
Text Zoom: VisioVoice includes an Text Enlarger that shows the title of buttons, menus, text entry areas, and all other "accessible" text in large type in a separate window. Because the text itself is enlarged, rather than the image of the text, the enlarged text is crisp and easy to read. This feature works for all applications that support Apple's Accessibility API, including Safari, Mail, Finder, TextEdit, as well as many third-party applications.
Talking interface: VisioVoice's Talking Interface speaks the contents of buttons, menu items, text entry areas, and all other "accessible" text, as the user navigates across the screen. This feature works for all applications that support Apple's Accessibility API, including Safari, Mail, Finder, TextEdit, as well as many third-party applications.
Translated version of VoiceOver: VisioVoice includes translations of VoiceOver and VoiceOver Utility for French and Dutch so that now also non-English users can make use of the built-in Mac OS X screen reader. Additional languages may be available in the future.
Infovox iVox naturally-sounding, multi-lingual voices: VisioVoice comes bundled with Infovox iVox, which provides the best voices ever on the Mac. Infovox iVox is available for multiple languages, including: American English, British English, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Flemish, Spanish, Portuguese, Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish.
System-wide keyboard shortcuts: VisioVoice provides many user-configurable system-wide hot keys for easy access to it's core functionality by blind and vision impaired users.

Limitations:
15 days trial.

What's New:
The Document Reader now also works with encrypted PDFs
The Text Zoom and Talking Interface are now more responsive and more accurate
The Selection Reader now works more reliably with text selected in Safari
Voice volume and speech rate settings now work correctly [fix]
Highlighting of spoken words now also works correctly for accented characters [fix]
Several other fixes and improvements.

Requirements:
Minimum recommended hardware: G3/G4/G5 900 Mhz with 512 MB or any Intel Mac.

VisioVoice 1.0.1 keywords