speech enabling your website

anyone doing this?

[HelenDev]

I have been asked to look into the possiblities of this for our website.

There are a couple of companies offering solutions that you install on your website, which then allow text and/or links to be read out to the user.

From looking around on other forums however, it seems that these may just be gimmicks rather than of real use to people? Is it better to leave it to the end user to install their own screen reading software or speech enabled browser, which they can then use on the whole internet, rather than a small handful of sites?

Perhaps these tools might be of more use if/when they are more widely used? Is this why the RNIB website doesn't appear to mention these technologies at all when talking about web accessibility?

I'd be very interested to hear people's opinions on the matter.

[benihana]

Id say if someone needs your site read to them, they will probably have the tools that allow this available to them.

Much better to concentrate on making your site easy to access using screenreaders and other assistive technologies.

imo, of course
:)

[karmov]

I agree with benihana, follow accessibility guidelines if you want to make your site available to people with special needs. Accessibility guidelines will help cover a lot of bases all at once, whereas this particular product only adresses one need and, as mentioned, if someone needs to have websites read out to them, they will likely already be equipped for that. Otherwise, how would they have gotten to you site in the first place :)

[Matt Probert]

And me! <g>

Screen reader and braille software is widely used by those that wish to use them. If you are concerned that your site may not be easy to use with them, just try looking at it with the free Lynx browser, that will give you a good idea of the site's accessibility - without spending out.

Matt