Entrepreneur Chris Mairs is developing a device, called SpeakOn, that would enable blind and “partially-sighted” people with few technical skills to easily surf the web’s ever-growing supply of audio offerings over a broadband connection. It would hopefully hit the market toward the end of this year or early next, according to the BBC.
Mairs, who is himself blind, is designing SpeakOn for folks who are “technologically frail,” people for whom the idea of using a computer with a screenreader is an intimidating prospect at best. Those who were born blind or have been that way for a long time less easily understand the way screenreaders transmit computerized information. He says:
“To use a screenreader you have to understand the visual paradigm – what dialogue boxes are, radio buttons and all the rest…That’s the wrong model as far as I’m concerned – what you really want is a model that is intrinsically orientated towards a one-dimensional audio stream.”
To that end, SpeakOn will probably not be able to access much of the ‘net’s content, as such a high percentage is text- or visual-based. SpeakOn would instead concentrate on podcasts, MP3 files, Internet radio, and periodicals (including newspapers) that have been recorded by services like the Talking Newspapers Association; it would also be able to play CDs. SpeakOn would retail for under 600 dollars, and would feature navigation that’s intuitive and controlled by a simple 12-button keypad. “You don’t need to know that it’s a computer,” says Mairs. “People would maybe consider it to be more like a radio or a tape player.” Or at that price, maybe an iPod.
