Listen to your pages

[Sara Weissman/Morris Cty Library]

A revelation! Talking to a blind patron today (he and his wife
refurbish old computers and *give them away*) ..had he used WebSpeak,
said I? Well, actually, his personal preference is for Lynx, spoken,
said he. Sooo...as we are writing Special Populations pages right
this minute, I have just spent some time listening to our page i
in four different voices. Sure does change the way you write your
text ...and what to do about the fact that 4 voices do take | as
a pause ...but Victoria reads 'vertical bar" ...and (973) 285-6952
is not a phone number ..it is 973 million. 9-7-3-2-8-5 and so on
IS a phone number. Occurs to me...we let other people create
the materials for the handicapped (someone just makes those talking
books for us to ciruclate, right?) ..shoe on the other foot when
suddenly I have to create truly accessible content for all comers.
Its not just <font size=+1>!! Try saving one of your pages as
text (not source) and run it through text-to-speech ...