[mary-users] Fwd: comments regarding accessibility

[Marc Schröder]

From: "Tony  M Dart" <tony at seeingear.org>

Dear Dr Schroeder

I have just downloaded the MARY TTS system. he Java installer did not 
work over the web, but downloading the lot, then installing, worked 
perfectly immediately (System Windows 2000 Pro).

I saw your comment on the forum re accessibility. I am registered blind, 
and use a large (20 inch) LCD screen at 800 x 600 dpi. I found your 
website difficult to use, because the pages cannot be resized and each 
line must be scrolled across to read. This, in fact, was one of the mjor 
faults highlighted in a UN report on web-site inaccessibilty.

The product itself seems wonderful and maybe just what I need. I am 
searching for a way to read books for the blind. My first step was to 
set up a charity so that I could get a licence to get copyrighted 
material legally. Then I set up a library of books - this is available 
to any E U citizen who is visually impaired at www.seeingear.org. It is
the only one such librrary in Europe, I think.

Now I have a corpus of material that I can add to I eed to find a way of 
adding expression - either by offering modified texts for local 
rendering or by emploting my own server and either streaming audio or 
recording to CD and sending out. My belief is that I will need to 
mark-up the texts in a number of ways - for structure (to assist i 
navigation), for emotion (using EARL?) and maybe for voice or character. 
Some fun times ahead!

My question - how can I find out more about how MARY works? What I need 
is a working overview of the flow of control and which module produces 
which outputs, rather than a detailed examination of the code. Where do 
you recommend I look? I am a Perl programmer, so will have to learn Java.

My thanks, and my appreciation for what seems to be a very well thought
out and solid package.

Regards
Tony


Tony Dart
The Seeing Ear