[Access-activists] Re: [Accessibility] Call to Arms

[Eric S. Johansson]

 On 7/27/2010 8:57 PM, Bill Cox wrote:
> The whole software freedom first vs accessibility solutions first is a
> long dead, but ever-debated topic.  The people who count here are
> those with the disabilities, and in any straw-poll, I'm sure you'll
> find software developers with disabilities overwhelmingly decide to
> use commercial software to improve their productivity.  They win,
> because that's who this software is for.  I'd say "end of debate", but
> of course that will never happen.

Works for me.  I'll shut up now.

seriously, beside the fact that Richard and I are both intellectual bulldogs 
(grab onto an idea and not let go) I thought the discussion was worth having 
because this is a free software foundation sponsored list and if they say, thou 
shalt do only free software, then that is their right and we should respect that.

> However, let's not belittle RMS's contribution to the well being of
> the world.  Where would voice coders be without emacs, Vocola, and
> Dragonfly?  I would have lost my job when I couldn't type if it
> weren't for the power of emacs, even if I did drive it with Naturally
> Speaking.

I'm glad you pointed this out. We have already created some free tools to pull 
us away from proprietary ones. We are limited in terms of what we can do because 
the tools are  still primitive but, if we can attract help from people with 
hands, then the tools can get better to the point where we can contribute.
> So, on any voice-coding project I get to influence, I'll encourage
> having flexible API's, so that you could use Naturally Speaking or any
> other recognition engine.  However, the richness of that API will be
> far greater if we can edit functionality on both sides.  If we only
> use Naturally Speaking, we'll never get to the point where coding by
> voice is as productive as coding by typing.  I think we agree that
> such software is possible, and we probably agree that Nuance couldn't
> care less.

that's one of the reasons I like dragonfly. It's a reasonably decent API hand, 
it's has already targeted two speech engines. Nothing says that we can't target 
a third.

As for productivity writing code by voice, if we generate the right model, it 
should be faster than code generated by hand. If you try speaking the keyboard, 
it won't go well.

This also raises the question should we build a language that is friendly to 
speech recognition for creating these tools and general use. It doesn't have "a 
whole new language" it could just be a simple front-end with a translation system.