Welcome to joe budd's voice user interface project.
The site went live on January 1, 2008. This site is a project into making a web site more accessible and usable to the blind with a VUI. The technology which i implement is known as XHTML+Voice, sometimes referred to as X+V. The project has been up, down, broken, fixed, written and rewritten. At this point it is up, fixed, running and in its final stage of development. I am currently working on a simple installation and setup procedure.
This web site talks to you and you can talk to it.
The VUI has been designed to assist people with visual difficulties who would like to listen and talk to the web site instead of looking at it. If you are not hearing this web page talk to you then see my section Opera browser
.
You can look too.
If you are using the Opera browser with voice turned on, look at the source code of each page while the voice talks to you and you talk back to it. Save the code and tweak it to learn how the code works. I hope that you will find this site to be educational. Every page in this site contains source code which is a working example of XHTML+Voice code.
Accessibility.
An aspect of web accessibility is designing a web site to be accessible to users who must deal with the effects of the different visual disabilities such as
- blindness,
- low vision,
- color deficit or distortion,
- photo sensitivity,
- reading disabilities.
There are different accessibility design techniques which help to alleviate the effects caused by those disabilities.
Also, some users may want to use special software which assists them by reading the web pages to them. Those software require other accessibility design techniques.
This web site implements those visual web design techniques in order to be accessible to users who require and appreciate them. However, this web site also offers a voice user interface for visitors who would rather avoid the struggles which they encounter with the visual user interface.
Usability.
An aspect of usability is creating a smooth interaction between the blind user and a web site. I wanted to take usability for the blind way beyond what screen readers offer. I wanted a new level of usability that i could only achieve with my own VUI.
Audio Books.
In regard to usability an unexpected development has been with the book style layout of a section. When a section of the web site has a book layout the first page is the first article, the second page is the second article and so on. The VUI now treats a section with a book layout like an audio book. The VUI reads the first page and then continues to the next page and reads that and so on. See for yourself with my republishing of George Orwell's 1984.
Comments.
Use this site and then leave me some of your critical observations. I will appreciate all of your comments because positive or negative, they will all be constructive.