Window-Eyes: App Central & Other Things

Why?
Why would you want to use Window Eyes?
OK, so that sort of two questions, but really they're just the same question. Still, my question is valid. Please answer. Inquiring minds, and all that jazz. 😇

Exactly! What that data jake guy does is awesome! I never thought anyone would archive AT stuff like that. I wish his site was a little easier to make sense of though, instead of just being a big FTP directory.

I went looking for an old tutorial from BCT there but didn't find it, although there was a lot of other stuff there that I had forgotten about. I went back and listened to the episode of Main Menu when the PAC Mate got revealed, as well as the review when it came out. Holy nostalgia rush! I remember being so hyped for that, and eventually getting one and it not quite seeming to me like it was all it was cracked up to be.

I think it's good to preserve this stuff so we can look back at where we've been and how we got here. In an era where everyone constantly complains, it shows us how good we actually have it today.

Fair enough. In my defense, many, many moons ago, my ex and I had a copy of Window Eyes that was free because she had a licensed copy of Open Book from Freedom Scientific. It was an absolute nightmare to use on her copy of Windows 7, so I may perhaps have posted from a traumatized past experience. 😅😇

Hey guys,

during my years at FSDB, I used to use window-eyes. I didn't use Jaws until gratuation. I still used window-eyes as backup if Jaws was acting up.

Early in my college career, I had an iPad, an iPad 2 if memory serves.. don't laugh.
Anyways it had Kurzweil3000 loaded on it by the University. They would have the publisher of my textbooks scanned into a PDF format, then the disabilities department would load those PDFs onto the app, thus allowing me to have accessible e-book versions of my textbooks for my classes.

While it was not the best experience, it was.. functional. Later I went on to use DocUScan plus, which I found to be a lot more efficient for my use case.

Kurzweil3000 was not bad, mind you, but I swear the controls on it were designed for side of people. Instead of gestures, there were buttons for everything. Need to change a page, double tap the next page button. Need to scroll down, double tap the scroll button, etc., etc. it got even more convoluted if you needed to navigate by characters, words, etc. Because there were buttons for all of those as well... 🤯

I remember using Kurzweil 1000. My first version of that was 4.0 and it used the flex. Talk voices. Those were absolutely awful. I remember the exact order that those voices.. That’s how much I used to play around with them. They were Keith Bell, David, Daniela, Gabriella, Ian, Michael, Joseph, John, Patricia, Peter, Daisy, Megan, Bob, and Jerry Watson. My favorite Voice is in that were Daisy and Megan Carrie Watson out Michael and Joseph. Gabrielle and Gabriella and Daniela were awful. I don’t miss those at all and I have no wish to have them back. I didn’t use clothes as well again until version 10 and it had a few different speech engines. There was IBM via voice, which is literally like the older version of the eloquent voices and there was Voice sweater and I don’t remember other speeches but I know there was definitely those two, but that was back in high school. 1000 I was like 4.0 I was like so yeah. I was briefly introduced to open book but I definitely prefer Kurt while over open book for sure. I don’t use any kind of scanning software at all anymore. But yeah, I think we deserved to be able to hear the nostalgic screen readers and voices and things that we used to use I mean, people do it all the time, TVs and cameras and whatever we could do the same thing for us. I mean Apple’s kind of allowing that now we have all of the old Mac voices on the phones so why not

We can all dream. Smiley face it’s awesome. I mean, that’s what everybody that wanted eloquence on their phone so you never know it could happen. They could at least bring back some older voices in the iPhone. I wouldn’t be opposed to that. I want the keynote gold. Voice is back. I also want back deck. I’ll be totally cool with that.

Sadly Amazon bought them out years ago, and they are not sharing...

Oh, does anyone remember the speech engines for Android 2.x and later? Not talking about Pico TTS, but something else.. whose name escapes me at the moment. 🙁

SVOX, that was it. And yes, grace for the win! I would take that over anything vocalizer has to offer. Hands-down. 🤨

Follow this link below for a sample of Grace and Michael from SVOX. Michael kind of sounds like Daniel, the Vocalizer English UK voice.
https://youtu.be/LbfX4hXYWag?is=OpnQjIMzeP-4mv0k

I hope that we always have vocalizer as an option. I love Karen and Samantha. And without vocalizer voices, we wouldn’t have those voices. I mean, if they made another synthesizer with those voices, maybe the same name or something I would at least try them, but I love the ones I have now. You know what I really don’t want is actually those more natural voices. Let’s just sound way too human to me. I want to be able to distinguish the difference between a machine talking to me in a human person. When the voice is sound too natural, it’s hard to tell. I mean, granted, we’re not quite there with inflections and things yet, but still it’s getting a little too good for some of those Natural AI kind of voices. I don’t like those. But then again I always like. Don’t really mind the Apple voices either like I’ve used some of those once in a while. I like like Agnes Spruce, Vicky Victoria I like Cathy I don’t love Fred, but he’s OK too and I’m not really the biggest fan of Ralph but it’s cool that you have all those now. I do kind of wish I could delete the novelty voices though. It doesn’t incredibly annoying to me. The only one I would want to keep a superstar because that one actually sounds like a regular voice just keep little kid voice. I’ve tried to use those ones that sing whatever it’s like impossible to follow through with the screen reader I just couldn’t do it. I was getting headaches trying to concentrate so much on what it was saying that I just couldn’t do it. that’s why I wish I could delete those.

I totally want K.I.T.T.from the old 1982 television series, "Knight Rider". Sarcasm and all.

Brian, some of the Ivona voices is still distributed by Harpo Software, at least last time I checked.

Very cool. It's too bad these cannot be used with VoiceOver. Still, they sound nice for what they do.
The link below could give Vocalizer Karen enhanced a run for its money.
https://harposoftware.com/en/english-australia/137-nicole-australian-english-voice.html

Does anybody want celebrity voices? I could think of several people I want to be voices in my phone. I already know it’s not going to happen. And no, I don’t want AI trying to mimic them. It wouldn’t not be the same. But it would be kind of awesome either way. Because a few people I want to be voices from my phone. But since I like the voices that we have now I’m going to stay with those, but I can still dream.

I’m not really a fan of Nicole. I honestly prefer Karen. But that’s because of something I said earlier on this thread. I want my computer voices to sound like machines. If they sound so human, it’ll be almost distinguishable from an actual human. So I’d actually rather use Karen. Plus that Nicole Voice sounds bored out of her mind me honest. I know that’s totally a personal opinion and preference and whatever but yeah not the biggest fan. It’s cool to hear it anyway just to check it out though. Thanks for sharing.

Singer Girl does not like an Australian voice? A female Australian voice, no less?
Say it ain't so !!!

Side note, SVOX used to have a Darth Vader-esque voice if I am remembering correctly.

I'll tell you who I want; John Cleese. He would probably drive me insane... well more insane... I still want. 😀

https://svoxmobilevoices.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/intro_en-us_dark1.mp3

Old SVOX voice for Android circa 2010. Enjoy. 😀

Accent has nothing to do with it :-) it’s whenever any of the computer voices try to sound way too natural into human. I don’t like them. That’s why I don’t like the voices in the 11 labs app. I don’t like these super natural sounding voices that they have for the new phones so I’m really happy. I’m not getting them. Stuff like that. But yeah go figure. OK here’s the people I want for my iPhone. I want Jim Parsons. he’s Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory for anybody that knows that show I want Sarah Brightman singer and Jackie Ivanko, another singer and a like Julie Andrews since she’s already done like narration for her own audiobooks and things like that. Like I already know it’s not gonna happen so I can dream.

In the 90s there was this hot news woman in Chicago, beautiful voice, Joan Esposito. She still hot but her voice is OK. I think I misspell her last name.

Yes, definitely. I actually asked that question a little earlier on this thread too. I think a lot of of us would want celebrity voices. The only thing is though at least for me I would want their actual voice recordings, not an AI attempting to duplicate their voice. I already wrote down a couple people that I would want in my phone. But yeah, that would be pretty awesome. Although I honestly don’t know how well that would run on a screen reader but it’d be pretty cool if we could do it eventually, but I would want both so I’d want to have those as an option, but I still wanna have the vocalize voices too.

Have my list in my head, will start with my Lynda Carter. No guies voices. Just women.

Yeah, I would only want celebrity voices if we could get actual recordings of their voices. I would never want like an AI trying to duplicate a recording that it picks up of somebody’s voice. That would just be awful and totally not the same. That’s also kind of why I’ve never tried the whole personal voice thing. I would never wanna hear my own voice coming out of my phone. But hey, I think it’s cool for people that have used it. Oh, and the only other way I’d want that to happen is if you could actually get a human voice to respond quickly enough to navigating your device. If that can’t be done that I’d definitely rather stick with it. It’s currently available.

Linda Carter was so beautiful. Oh, and the best Wonder Woman.
True story. 😊

I was lucky that I could see when she became Wonder Woman. To me she will be WW, no one else will do so.

So even though I’ve been totally blind since birth, I used to play this game when I was a little kid, but I would try to imagine what the voices that we had looked like if they were really people. So as an example, I used to pretend that Bobby from Jaws was this little kid that was maybe like 10 years old and it was a boy in my imagination and he had like short hair and what he’s like special T-shirts and shorts and sneakers and just like a little face and that’s all I really remember, but yeah I totally used to do that. I don’t really do it anymore like it’s just one of those like weird things I used to do as a kid. And I used to try to think it’d be really cool if there was like a little face that would pop up on the screen that we could feel anytime we selected a different Voice name to really a different face that would come up. I mean, I’m weird. What can I say. Lol.

The voices never match the person how they look. Lucky for me those I grew up had very beautiful and sexy voices.

So, I don't know if this has anything to do with my experiences. I was born with eyesight. Spent the first 33 years of my life with eyesight. These days, whenever I hear a voice, especially if it's an actual person, whether on a podcast, a television, or in person, my brain always tries to put a face to their voice. I doubt it's accurate in anyway that matters, but it happens every single time.
Not so much so with synthesized speech however. 🤷

That makes sense to me because you’ve had so many visual memories of seeing people and being able to put faces to them. Since it synthesize, your voice never had any kind of face. It kind of makes sense that she wouldn’t have necessarily tried to put one to them. So that kind of makes a lot of sense to me. You went for a lot of your life being able to see so that kind of makes sense. And then it’s like the opposite with me because I’ve been completely fine since birth so nobody’s ever had a face for me in real life so I guess I played that game with synthesizer because there was never a face for my real life. I’m just guessing. But that’s very interesting anyway. It’s definitely coming from a different perspective for sure. That’s kind of cool actually.

Brian is right. It is a sighted thing. This is why the voice most times do not match the face.

To me, as someone who's also been blind since birth, I know, logically, that when I hear a person's voice, that that voice is coming out of a mouth in the middle of a face, which I visualize based on the shape of my own face. However, descriptions of individuals' specific facial features are virtually meaningless to me, likely because I have no internal frame of reference for the things that are commonly described, or I just never bothered to care much about such things to begin with.

I've always found it interesting that, at least according to this Vice article, no one born blind has ever been diagnosed with schizophrenia, since, at one point as a blind baby, I presumably didn't have the capacity to put two and two together that a voice came from a person with a face and a mouth in the middle of that face, effectively making disembodied voices some of the first things I ever heard.

That's interesting, but I suppose it also makes sense. As schizophrenia reduces the volume of the hippocampus (located in the frontal lobe), and the hippocampus and brain stem work in conjunction to produce REM sleep and dreaming.
As I understand it, and please correct me if I am wrong, but those who have never known eyesight, do not ever dream?
On a sidenote, there's a whole laundry list of what reducing the volume of the hippocampus does to a person, such as PTSD, Alzheimer's, reduction in cognitive memory, etc.
Good times for all. 🤯

You have to dream or you go nuts. They may not see in their dreams but people do dream. It is normal. Even animals dream.

I dream, with my dreams composed primarily of auditory and tactile inputs, no sight. In fact, dreams, with their atypical sensory experiences compared to wakeful life, were one of the first tools of logic I developed as a toddler to separate reality from fiction.

I remember a similar conversation on this website a couple of years back, were a handful of people who were blind from childhood/birth claimed that they never dreamed, so I was curious.
Hope I did not offend anyone. 🤷

No offense taken from me. As illustrated on this thread, experiences of people blind from birth with respect to visualization are rather varied.

Saying why as what Tyler was saying earlier. My dreams are purely auditory or tactile. There’s no sight in my dreams because I’ve never experienced sight in real life. I mean it’s never been part of my world so I suppose that’s why. The only other thing is that everybody’s experiences will be a little bit different. But now that’s definitely not offensive. I think it’s cool to ask these kind of questions. That’s how I learn information. Again, though any faces that I would’ve experienced even in the voices that I used to try to imagine we’re still tactical faces. I base those on. You know the shape of my own face so that’s how it all kind of started. I haven’t played that game for a long time though. I wish we could get dolls that had recording the voice voices on them though. I mean, I’m not sure what we would base them on to look like but they could have like a doll with Karen Voice or a doll Samantha‘s voice or like any of the other voices that people would want. When they could look like any kind of dolly want I mean you could even put them in like a stuffed animal or something if you want it. Like that just needs to happen that was so fun.

When I dream, I do not need my came. I can see as if it was very dark but not able to see people. Strange. It feels like twilight for those who can see in the past. Or if you only see a person behind a curtain.

I think I have posted about this before, but when I dream, they're silly. I sometimes have a cane. I sometimes have my guide dog. In my dream I will tell people that I am blind, which is why I have either device. However, in my dreams, I can see like I used to back when I had 20/20 vision.
My dreams are satirical. 🙄

It’s really interesting. If I ever going somewhere in my dreams, I do have my game. Most of the time though my dreams are just in the house over somewhere. I’m already am when whatever dream my house and it’s just like conversations or music stuff like that. Very interesting to hear the perspective of people that used to be able to see though. Like we’re totally off-topic, but I honestly don’t care at this point because it’s pretty interesting. Interestingly enough, I never hear any synthesize speech in the dreams I’ve had because they’ve literally always been conversations with humans so yeah.

Wow. The revised thread title "and other things" is an understatement. Very cool stuff, though, so here's my $.02.
Many years ago, I read quite a bit of the cognitive psych literature regarding the visual cortex as a tangent to my dissertation. Researchers who I wanted to throttle were baffled by activity in the visual cortex among congenetally-blind people. It seemed obvious to me, right or wrong, that the "visual" part is visuo-centric, and that it's in whole or in part a spatial cortex as its more basic function. One researcher plugged in some gerbils and made them watch the matrix. Shapes on the screen appeared in decodable format in the visual cortex (V1). Those poor gerbils: not only were they killed afterwards, but the last thing they saw had to be Keanu Reeves.
I had partial vision until my twenties. I continue to navigate using a visual image. I sometimes get disoriented when I'm thinking intensely about a different space than the one I'm in. Dizzy, almost. Blindness has never been part of my dream experiences. This is a terrible thing, because no dream can ever come true. Sad frowny face.
The human brain abhors a vaccuum. Everyone with experience of sight fills in enough of a visual sketch to think about and process information, including voices and stories. I can describe in detail everyone I meet, and I'm always wildly wrong. Music is the same for me. People misuse the concept of synesthesia, which is in fact a very profound and non-representational brain wiring issue; but most people see music in strokes of color. Guitars are red for me, but probably just because my brother had a red guitar growing up; pianos are black and white (duh), drums are white (white noise), saxes are blue (blue note), Hammond organs are blue-green.
Microsoft George is is a kindly gray-haired old guy with blue eyes; kind of scrawny. Neuro voice Guy has vaguely brown hair, black eyes, strong features, wears a white shirt. Reed is just a voice, but has a grayish color. ESpeak is the android from Alien after his skin was ripped off.
Also, not to get off topic, but hard-core Window-Eyes user here! Corresponded with Aaron Smith many times over the years.