Thetis Accessibility for the Blind

[MikeDeVO1OP]

Good Afternoon all:

Allow me to introduce my self, I'm Michael Ryan (VO1OP) a blind ham from Newfoundland Canada.
I joined this community to mainly engage the community about possibly making Thetis accessible for the blind. There are already a couple of programs out there that run on a Mac and iOS devices that are accessible to the blind. These are Dog Park SDR and Smart SDR which runs on an iPhone or iPad. The screen reader that Apple uses is called Voice Over and is very intuitive. As I've read, any SDR client can run on the Apache Labs ANAN line using the open HPS2 protocol, I don't think it would be to hard to adapt Dog Park to work with these rigs. I only know of 1 blind accessible windows program and the gentleman who designed the program has no desire to adapt it to Apache Labs. I'm mainly concerned about the future for us blind hams. With the VGS1 chip no longer available which gives the Kenwoods speech support, Yaesu having no speech support on it's HF rigs and Icomm very limited to only S meter reading and frequency, the future looks bleak. Sure Flex is now accessible but it would be nice to have the Apache Labs gear accessible too. I'm really not sure how to begin such a project as I'm not a programmer by any stretch but I would be more than happy to consult on a project is there's any interest. I'm good on QRZ if somebody wants to get a hold of me off board and perhaps we can get something going. As the Andromeda has a fully functioning windows PC in it, what would happen if you installed a windows based screen reader? Would you get the PC functions like I do and have the buttons and knobs to do the radio stuff? I ran an FTDX1200 for years and except for some sighted help to set my set and forgets, it was quite usable. Perhaps the Andromeda can work the same way that if it's still being produced. Perhaps a webSDR style interface would work with the ANAN-G2. I have no issues with tuning around and controlling the WebSDR online receivers. So perhaps something like this could be developed. There is also a screen reader for Linux called Orca but not sure if there's a pi version. So I'll stop rambling now and hopefully there's someone in this community willing to take this on. Thank you all, again I'm good on QRZ if someone wants to get in touch off board.

Best 73:
Michael DE VO1OP

[GW4NNO]

Hello Michael, I too would love Thetis to become accessible for blind people! I am registered as blind here in the UK but I do have a small amount of useful sight so I've managed to find a suitable setting for my scaling and font sizes in Windows that allows me to use Thetis on a large monitor screen.

I did try Thetis once with the NVDA screen reader. NVDA (none visual desktop access) is a free Windows screen reader like voice over that Michael mentioned for the Mac. NVDA does read quite a bit of Thetis already but I found that there are lots of the buttons and sliders on the main screen that don't appear to be labelled so NVDA cannot announce what they are.

A further feature that Thetis has that would be useful for the blind is the keyboard control option. I tried this too but the keyboard function does not work very well. some of the keys don't do what they are supposed to do and others do nothing at all! I think if the labelling of controls was improved and the keyboard commands worked properly and could be improved then Thetis itself could be made accessible without too much work. I'm no programmer either so as Michael says it would need someone to take on this job.

Yes there are fewer rigs that visually impaired operators can use now but there is some basic PC CAT control software offered by DJ0HF for many of the rigs but not for the Apache labs range.

Terry. GW4NNO

[Joerg]

Hello,

I had a thought about your topic, Thetis can also be controlled via a DJ controller, you can assign all the important functions to buttons or knobs. The VFOs A and B can also be operated in this way.
I have installed a DJ controller from Hercules, the MP3LE is available cheaply on the Internet. It should be possible to combine this with voice output.
As I'm not blind, I can't really judge whether this can work.

Merry Christmas and all the best for the New Year.

Jörg, DD8JM

[GW4NNO]

Yes actual physical controls can be useful for some users but many computer savvy blind people could use thetis just from the PC if it was made accessible. It is feedback from the software that is needed really though usually in speech. information such as current frequency and band, S meter and other readings, status of controls etc. Thetis needs to make this information available to a screen reader so that a blind person can access it and hear the information in synthetic speech output.

Terry GW4NNO