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[school-discuss] special needs Linux tools



Thanks Gord, this looks very attractive for some of the visually-impaired kids, I'll check it out. I just installed MS Office 2000 on the refurb PC that we just put in the class so I could run PowerTalk for the visually impaired kids. Wish it worked with OpenOffice...

Two of the Win/Mac applications that are of great interest and used often in the special needs class are the Edmark (now Riverdeep) Let's Go Read series and the Laureate software Talk Time with Tucker and Tiger's Tale, all of which encourage children to talk (or at least vocalize) in order to make things happen on the screen. Neither of these titles are available in Linux, although I've noticed some of Riverdeep's other titles like Reader Rabbit being available in Linux now. And I found that a conventional PC microphone did have the quality and volume required for these titles, and so have installed a USB mic which does work well with the software titles.

I also changed the subject heading to better reflect this thread.

Daniel

At 01:43 PM 6/24/2005, you wrote:
Does anyone have experience with emacspeak
http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/

this may provide the sound interface Daniel is interested in.

The emacspeak release (version 22.0-1) is fairly new, but much of the
supporting documentation is a few years old.

Both KDE and Gnome have accessibility projects

KDE http://accessibility.kde.org/
Gnome http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gap/

The applications from KDE's accessibility project are now part of the standard
KDE applications from version 3.4 and up.


Xandros uses KDE

Gord

On June 24, 2005 06:56 am, Daniel Howard wrote:
> Does Xandros/Crossover give good support for sound, microphone and
> USB/serial ports?  That's one of the issues in a special needs class in our
> school.  The special needs software uses microphone input for children with
> speech impediments, and there are also several USB/serial communication
> devices (touchscreens, communication assistance devices, etc.) that we need
> to support.  Since Wine and Win4Lin often do not support such devices, I'm
> stuck with using Windows2000 refurbished PCs (XP won't run much of the
> older software) and am concerned about hooking them to the Internet for the
> same reasons below.
>
> Daniel
>
> At 07:22 AM 6/24/2005, you wrote:
> >On Thu, 23 Jun 2005, Daniel Howard wrote:
> > > By the way, I set up a conference call yesterday with our four
> > > principals, who are either switching to Linux K12LTSP or considering
> > > it, and two other
> >
> >...
> >
> > >          2.  The other K12LTSP principal said he still had Windows
> > > 95/98 PCs at his school in order to run legacy Windows software, but
> > > that he would not let them be connected to the Internet as a measure to
> > > prevent viruses and other malware.  The Linux thin clients are the only
> > > ones that can access the Internet.
> >
> >I'd be curious to know what legacy software, and if any attempt has been
> >made to run it on a Xandros with Crossover. I've had excellent results
> >using this.
> >
> >--christine
>
> Daniel Howard
> President and CEO
> Quadrock Communications, Inc
> 404.264.9123 main
> 678.528.5839 fax
> 404.625.1593 cell

--
Gordon J. Holtslander     /     Dept. of Biology
holtslander@xxxxxxxxxxxxx  /    University of Saskatchewan
tel 306 966-4433          /     112 Science Place
fax 306 966-4461          /     Saskatoon, SK Canada
                          /     S7N 5E2


Daniel Howard
President and CEO
Quadrock Communications, Inc
404.264.9123 main
678.528.5839 fax
404.625.1593 cell