6. Speakers and microphones

Speakers

Speakers can be useful for visually impaired people in terms of text-to-speech systems.

The text-to-speech system takes in text as input and then outputs speech to a set of speakers.

There are a number of text to speech software programs that enable any text on the screen to be selected with the keyboard or mouse. It is then spoken back to the user in a computer generated voice.

The computer generated voice can sound disjointed and sometimes pronunciation can make the output difficult to understand.

The new e-book devices such as the Kindle can also speak out the book being read.

Microphone

A microphone can be useful for people who find it difficult to use a keyboard or mouse.

The person speaks their input clearly and specialist software is then used to convert the speech or commands into text or other actions.