Studio Diary

Reading and writing are both vegetables, but they are as different as carrots and peas, this shows up more with me because of the programs that I used to access these skills.

Two completely separate programs
screen reading = reading (input typed text output synthetic digital voice)
dictation programs = writing (input spoken word output typed text

Screen reading and dictation programs only have one thing in common, on the whole they work with other programs e.g. Internet Explorer open office Wordpad and such. My screen reader for example will read directly off of open office, but not from Microsoft Word. (I do not know about the latest version.) My dictation program will work pretty much where you can input text, but with PDFs there very rarely is a text field, unless they are set up for form filling. Because of the closed way PDFs are made very few screen readers will read PDFs either.

Screen reading and dictation programs give me a level of independence, for e-mail and the blog both programs are perfect. If I had two identical forms one in PDF one in HTML, and just say they were two pages long, they both need filling in the questions are straightforward (do not need to think about the answers.) The HTML form would take me 20 min start to finish. The PDF form could take me hours. And that's if I can get somebody to read me the questions! as my screen reader would not. It sounds obvious but these programs are not a replacement for reading and writing, and the formats that are given to me to read or write on need to be fought about because it makes the difference between a task being straightforward or impossible.

The images are what happens to the word files when I put them into OpenOffice. So I was not able to read them or sign them at the same time. And I like to remember what I am signing for but I have read them! when I get the new computer it will have Microsoft Word so there should not be a problem.