[Accessibility-ia2] Minutes for FSGA IA2 meeting - Jan 30, 2007

Pete Brunet brunet at us.ibm.com
Mon Feb 5 22:47:14 PST 2007


Regrets
Luke Kowalski

Attendees
Mike Squillace, Michael Stewart, Larry Weiss, Pete Parente, Janina Sajka, 
Neil Soiffer, Aaron Leventhal, Andres Gonzales

Summary of Discussion
Use SUCCEEDED and FAILED macros for checking the HRESULT.  Don't check for 
S_OK.

Janina Sajka discussed the name change from FSG to the Linux Foundation. 
FSG Board of Directors is very supportive of IA2. 

The remaining discussion was about supporting Math.  Neil described how 
the text representing a mathematical formula is not in a form that can be 
spoken correctly by a TTS engine or a Braille device.  But AT vendors 
don't want to know about math, they want to just make a call.  The current 
hack is to use name tag.  It would be nice to embed speech queues but this 
is not device independent and not all TTS engines take speech queues.

For example, f=ma comes out as f = mah, want pauses, etc.  Comprehesion 
goes way up if spoken correctly using pitch changes and good timing. Voice 
changes aren't that effective.  Other examples are chemistry and sheet 
music.

Larry pointed out that the AT might have to handle TTS and Braille at the 
same time and this would requuire different content for TTS and Braille. 

Neil suggested that the AT would tell the app how to present the math 
strings, i.e. the required format.  The app would have code, possibly via 
a plugin, that would make the appropriate conversion.

Aaron and Larry pointed out that the AT should deal with this issue, not 
the application.  There is a need to separate the model and the view.  The 
API is to retrieve content; the AT then modifies content for the user 
based on settings, content, etc. 

The transformers can be packaged such that other ATs can take advantage of 
the feature.

It was felgt that a separate group should work on this issue to develop an 
open standard.  Janina said she'd check into the possibilities.

Pete Brunet
                                                                         
IBM Accessibility Architecture and Development
11501 Burnet Road, MS 9022E004, Austin, TX 78758
Voice: (512) 838-4594, TL 678-4594, Fax: (512) 838-9666
Ionosphere: WS4G
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