[Athen] other alternatives to Kurzweil?

[Zach]

I know there is another product similar to Kurzweil made by Freedom Scientific (OpenBook), however if your student is having issues with computerized speech this may not be a solution. Another issue I would  caution you in regards to is that neither  Kurzweil nor OpenBook can reliably  recognize math characters. It is also my experience that they can have issues with tables, particularly complicated ones, and figures are out of the question. I myself rely on the aid of visual transcribers for dealing with math and figures. 

 

 

Zac

 

Zachary Mason

M.S. Student

Animal and Dairy Sciences

Mississippi State University

 

From: athen-list <athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu> On Behalf Of JORDISON_SHAWN
Sent: Monday, September 10, 2018 7:29 PM
To: athen-list at u.washington.edu
Subject: Re: [Athen] other alternatives to Kurzweil?

 

Did you try the online version of Kurzweil? They’re voices are better IMO. The standalone/web licensing version uses the more robotic voices. 

 

*	Shawn 

 

From: athen-list [mailto:athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu] On Behalf Of Kevin Andrews
Sent: Monday, September 10, 2018 4:00 PM
To: athen-list at u.washington.edu <mailto:athen-list at u.washington.edu> 
Subject: [Athen] other alternatives to Kurzweil?

 

Hi all,

 

I met with a student who I've seen before. They are finding the voices very difficult with Kurzweil and from our discussion, they have tried a variety of voices, different rates of speech, etc, and reported disliking the robotic-sounding voices, not maintaining inflection appropriately, etc. We talked about Learning Ally, but just given a couple of the titles, I don't know this will be feasible since LA does not always carry the titles--as is the case for the one title they were able to give me already thus far.

 

Does anyone have any other suggestions? It seems computerized voices are problematic for the student. Any suggestions would be very much appreciated here.


 

-- 

Best,

Kevin Andrews
Pronouns: He/Him/His
Accessible Technology Coordinator,
Scribes and Readers Coordinator
Disability Resource Center
University of California, Santa Cruz
Website: drc.ucsc.edu <http://drc.ucsc.edu> 


Direct Line: 831 459-1262

Please allow 24 hours for a response. For immediate needs, contact the DRC main line by phone at 831-459-2089.


Confidentiality Notice:This e-mail communication and any attachments may contain confidential and privileged information.If you are not the intended
recipient(s), you are hereby notified that you have received this communication in error and that any review, disclosure, dissemination, distribution or
copying of this message or its attachments is strictly prohibited.  If you have received this communication in error, please notify me immediately by replying to this message and deleting it from your computer.  








































-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman12.u.washington.edu/pipermail/athen-list/attachments/20180910/3ad9a608/attachment.html>