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#CSUN14 Audio: AI Squared Talks ZoomText for Mac Speech Features, Sitecues for Web Publishers


AI Squared has been making many improvements to its venerable ZoomText screen magnification software including some new speech support for its Mac product. But why would you add speech to ZoomText for Mac when VoiceOver already is on every computer? We spoke with Derek Bove, Technical Product Manager for AI Squared, to talk about the latest with ZoomText and the nuts and bolts of AI Squared's new Sitecues tool for web publishers.in Blind Bargains audio coverage of CSUN 2014 is generously sponsored by the American Foundation for the Blind.

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Direct from San Diego, it’s BlindBargains.com coverage of CSUN 2014. The biggest names, provocative interviews, and wall-to-wall exhibit hall coverage, brought to you by the American Foundation for the Blind.

VisionAware.org is a free, easy-to-use website for adults with vision problems. If you’re having trouble seeing and don’t know where to turn for answers, VisionAware provides you with expert solutions and advice. Learn about your eye condition, get practical advice for working with vision loss, discover how to keep doing all the things you love to do, find help, hope, and connection at VisionAware.org.

Now, here’s J.J. Meddaugh.

J.J.: We are pleased to welcome back to our podcast coverage Derek Bove, the Technical Product Manager for Ai Squared, here to talk about the latest with Ai Squared, including sitecues and the latest with ZoomText. Derek, welcome back to the podcast.

DB: Thanks for having me, J.J.

J.J.: So of course, a lot has changed in the last year with ZoomText. Last year you released your Mac product, and of course, there’s been updates for that, so why don’t you talk a little bit about what’s been going on lately.

DB: Sure. We released ZoomText Mac last January at the ATIA Conference. Magnification only at that time, and now we’re working on a number of new speech features for the products. We definitely recognize that many of our users have been waiting for those types of features on the platform, so we’re introducing three new features.

One is called Focus Echo, which is similar to Program Echo with ZoomText for Windows. Basically wherever you are on screen, if you’re tabbing through controls or you’re going through menus, opening application, it’ll read to you what item you’re currently on or your window title. So some basic speech feedback; we’re not looking to compete or reinvent voiceover, but just provide the basic and most essential speech features that our users need.

J.J.: What is the point of having speech features when you already have VoiceOver? How does this differ?

DB: That’s a good point. If you think about ZoomText versus a screen reader, there’s more that a screen reader’s going to say, and most of our users just want a certain amount of speech read back to them. It’s kind of the same idea. We don’t have to provide the nth level of description as far as speech goes on the platform. Let’s do similar to what we do on the PC side and give them what we think is the most pertinent information of onscreen information on the screen.

J.J.: Okay. You mentioned the Focus Echo, and what are the other two?

DB: Another feature is Mouse Echo. Many people are already familiar with the concept; you use your mouse as a pointing device, point it to text, and it will read the text that’s underneath the mouse pointer. So very similar functionality that you’ve seen in ZoomText over the years.

And the last new feature is called Web Reader, and this one is pretty revolutionary, at least for us. We recognize that one of the biggest problems for our users is reading text on the web. You’ve got an article and you want to read the article information, but there’s ads, there’s tabs, there’s tons of extraneous information onscreen. What the Web Reader does is it will parse all the information on the webpage you’re on and start reading from the actual title of the article. So just strip the important information from the page and start reading it back to you.

J.J.: Of course, that’s going to depend on the website how well that works, right? Is there certain triggers that it looks for as far as ARIA landmarks or headings or things like that? Or how does it detect the main…

DB: Yeah, as far as specifics, I don’t have any details as far as how the engine works or what it’s looking for, but it’s pretty sophisticated in stripping out information that’s not pertinent to where the article is. Worst case scenario, it’s just going to start in the top left of the page, just like if you started any other reading tool on the web. The good news about Web Reader is that it’s not only for web content. You can read any text from the clipboard or any text you’ve selected with your keyboard or mouse. So it’s not precluded to just content on the web; you can use it elsewhere as well.

J.J.: Is there some similarities here between that and the app reader, the doc reader on Windows?

DB: Yes, very similar in the look and feel to Doc Reader. It has a full screen or a windowed interface, high contrast colors, sentence and word highlighting; you can customize your text size, the colors of any of the highlights, control the playback of it, advance by sentence, paragraph, word, so on and so forth.

J.J.: So if you were going to use ZoomText for Mac, you would not have VoiceOver enabled at the same time?

DB: Yeah, I guess it depends on the individual. Because you could use VoiceOver for your screen reading and turn off the other speech in ZoomText and just use Web Reader for documents or web content. So I guess it depends on what the user needs in terms of speech. But again, our whole idea is to provide essential speech features, not reinvent VoiceOver, because there’s existing functionality there that’s very good on the platform.

J.J.: Which voice are you using for the speech?

DB: It’s just going to use whatever the built-in assigned system voice is. By default, you’re going to get Alex, but on the Mac platform, you can download many other human-sounding voices for free.

J.J.: Okay, so it will integrate with the existing voice infrastructure that’s already on your Mac.

DB: Exactly right, yep.

J.J.: Are these updates free, or is it a paid update?

DB: Free update for existing ZoomText Mac users. Once we released these speech features, we will likely raise the price of the product. But if you already own ZoomText Mac, you’re going to get it as a free update. There will be no upgrade cost associated with it.

J.J.: Is it going to be like Windows, where you’re going to have two different flavors, one with speech, one without? Or are you going to just have one version?

DB: Just one version.

J.J.: And the price currently – you said it might be going up a little bit?

DB: Yep. Currently it’s $299. If you already own ZoomText, we give you a significant discount; it’s $149 for existing ZoomText for Windows users. Like I said, the price will likely go up once we release those speech features.

J.J.: When are you betting that’s going to happen?

DB: We’re looking at I’m going to say late April, early May. So by the end of the spring is what we’re targeting.

J.J.: Do you know what the new price is going to be?

DB: Right now we’re not really sure, but again, we just want to inform people, hey, if you’re interested in it, it might be in your best interest to buy it now.

J.J.: Sure. I’m sure they appreciate the transparency there.

DB: Yep.

J.J.: You sell the product directly; are you also selling it through the Mac App Store?

DB: We’re just selling it directly. There are some – actually, I don’t believe we can sell it through the App Store because of how our application behaves in the operating system. There are some strict regulations in the App Store, and so technically I don’t think we can sell it on the App Store.

J.J.: Okay. It was just curiosity, since there’s that infrastructure out there and how companies are using it. Of course, you haven’t left the Windows products to just sit there. You’ve been adding some new touch screen features and a lot of stuff with Windows 8.1.

DB: Yeah, we’ve been doing a lot on the Windows side, both in ZoomText and our Image Reader product. As far as ZoomText goes, our 10.1 version now supports Windows 8.1. We’re working on getting our touch screen support working in that operating system. Microsoft will be releasing a hot fix in the new few weeks that will address that issue. Then we’re also going to be adding Windows 7 support for the ZoomText 10.1 product. So right now, we kind of have two ZoomText versions depending on your OS.

J.J.: Right, because when 10.1 came out, it was a Windows 8 only product. It didn’t upgrade Windows 7.

DB: Yep. So now we’ll be adding Windows 7 support into that so everyone can migrate to that product if they’re on Win 7 or Windows 8, along with having support for new versions of Office, Office 2013. We have future plans for adding more features to the 10.1 product as well.

J.J.: Such as…

DB: Such as some new dual monitor support. That’s one thing that we wanted to – that’s not currently in the 10.1 product. We recognize an opportunity to extend some of the functionality that we already have existent in ZoomText 10.0.

J.J.: You mentioned the Image Reader as well. That was a product that came out about last year, and there’s some updates to that?

DB: Yep, we are releasing, in the next couple weeks, an international – excuse me, I should say a multilingual version of ZoomText Image Reader that’s going to come with a pack of ZoomText voices. These are all the vocalized or expressive engines, many, many, many different voices. I forget the exact number, but basically if you buy the multilingual version, you can put a document – we even have one here at the show – that has different languages in it. Snap a picture of it, it’ll automatically switch the speech engine to the text that it’s reading. So if it’s German text, it’ll switch to a German synthesizer on the fly as it’s reading.

J.J.: So it’ll recognize the language and read in the proper language.

DB: Exactly, and the user can assign what voice they want for each language.

J.J.: Do you buy all the voices as one package then?

DB: Yep, correct. It will come as part of the multilingual product, and that ZoomText voices pack will also be ported over to ZoomText in the near future.

J.J.: So the multilingual addition, as it were – it’s kind of an add-on, an additional cost as an upgrade?

DB: Right. We have an English and a multilingual version of Image Reader. Multilingual will be a little bit higher in price. I think it’s just a $100 difference, I believe, for the multilingual version.

J.J.: Sure. Any other features for Image Reader to speak of? Is it still mostly a low vision product? I know it would work for the blind, but…

DB: Yeah. I mean, there are a lot of things that are on our roadmap. Right now, we wanted to focus on getting some international language support to the product. We released it I believe last March, so many of our international users have been wanting that product localized in their native language. So that’s what we’re focusing on now, and there are a lot of things coming down the pipe to improve that product. We’re also looking to see if we can extend it onto the Mac platform as well.

J.J.: Also, a couple months ago at ATIA, you made a big announcement with a product called sitecues, which is a different approach to providing magnification and access from the server side. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about that?

DB: Sitecues is more of a corporate solution for an organization that wants to provide magnification and speech functionality on their website, so anyone visiting their webpage would have access to these features. There’s no installation required. It’s a simple badge that’s on the webpage that the user can hover their mouse over, and it allows magnification and speech. So if the user increases the magnification level to a certain size, speech will automatically turn on, give them some instructions on how to use the product, and they can even use the mouse to hover over text, press the spacebar key, have it enlarged and read back to them as well.

J.J.: So there’s no plug-ins required or anything.

DB: No plug-ins.

J.J.: It’s a server-side language that’s providing all that feedback.

DB: Exactly, yeah. No local installation required. And it’s great for any organization that’s looking to kind of extend their audience. Maybe there’s people that go to their site that don’t know about ZoomText, that don’t know about low vision or blind tools, and if it’s a consumer site and people are trying to check out and they have no way of doing it, something like sitecues can help them go through that process and things like that.

J.J.: Is it more focused on magnification first, and then speech as a secondary? Just like ZoomText is.

DB: Yep, for now that approach holds true for sitecues. As far as future product plans, I don’t know if the functionality will be extended into the blindness side of things, but it’s certainly something we’re considering.

J.J.: Which browsers and platforms does it work with currently?

DB: There are a number of platforms it works with: Chrome, Safari, Firefox, IE 9 and newer, and I believe that’s all of them. There might be one more.

J.J.: That’s pretty much – yeah, Windows and Mac. And then what about Safari on the iPhone as well?

DB: Mobile platforms I believe is something that we’re working on for future versions, but that is on the roadmap.

J.J.: Speaking from a compliance perspective, is there a concern that companies might think that they could put sitecues on their website and then not have to make other accessibility improvements for those who wouldn’t be using sitecues?

DB: Right, that’s a great question, and we’re very upfront and honest with them, both in person, on our website, and in our literature, to inform them that, “Hey, this does not make you compliant. You still have to make sure you do your due diligence as far as your web development goes to make sure that your site is accessible to screen readers, to low vision tools like ZoomText.” So yeah, we don’t position sitecues as a compliance solution.

It’s really a solution that’s not necessarily accessibility – I mean, you’re looking at a tool that can appeal to just people that have aging eyes and wear reading glasses, and they might not know how to use the built-in browser tools, and it’s a pain to drag those scroll bars. Sitecues automatically pan horizontally as you move the mouse, things like that that make the user experience much, much easier.

J.J.: Sure. And if one is already using ZoomText, the sitecues features just wouldn’t be activated? Are they designed to not…

DB: They have to elect to enable sitecues.

J.J.: Or even any other magnification product at all. They aren’t going to clash.

DB: Yeah, there’s not going to be any conflicts. But we are working on better interoperability between the two in terms of turning certain features on or off depending on what the user is already running.

J.J.: If you go across say multiple websites that are all using sitecues, is there any cross preferences between different sites?

DB: Yes, I believe your settings may be stored locally if you have certain preferences set, like the magnification level, speech on or off. I believe that is stored locally.

J.J.: Sure. You mentioned this is more of a corporate solution; what’s the pricing model for this?

DB: Pricing is based on the number of page views. We sell this as an annual charge or license, and it’s based on the number of page views. So if you have a lot of page views, your cost will be higher than someone that’s got a mom and pop website.

J.J.: What’s the low end?

DB: Low end is probably around $1,500 to $2,000 for the year, which is really, really affordable for something like that. But again, it all depends on the number of hits we do. We’re actually offering free website evaluations here at the show, so we’ll actually have people come up to the booth, they’ll tell us what their site is, we’ll do an evaluation, tell them, “Hey, you can install sitecues today.” It’s a simple installation process that takes no more than a half hour.

J.J.: Are you pretty much just adding some lines of code on each webpage to enable it?

DB: Yep, exactly.

J.J.: Okay. Are there certain types of websites that it works better with as far as certain website designs that would be more amenable to using sitecues?

DB: I’m sure there are. I don’t know exactly what those are in terms of the technical requirements there, but I’m sure they’re there, some that are more – better –

J.J.: And I guess that’s what the evaluation would figure out, too.

DB: Exactly right.

J.J.: Whether the site’s going to work well in the current capacity with sitecues.

DB: And there may be changes that the web developer needs to make in order for the two to work well, the website and sitecues, so again, that evaluation is all done before we integrate into their site.

J.J.: All right. If people want to get more information about anything we’ve talked about, what’s the best way to do that?

DB: You can do that by going to aisquared.com, and if you haven’t, click on the News tab and then click on the “Newsletter” link. Sign up for our newsletter; you’ll be informed on all of our new products, services, our blog, and everything like that. So aisquared.com is where you want to go.

J.J.: Great. Thanks a lot, Derek.

DB: J.J., thank you.

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J.J. Meddaugh is an experienced technology writer and computer enthusiast. He is a graduate of Western Michigan University with a major in telecommunications management and a minor in business. When not writing for Blind Bargains, he enjoys travel, playing the keyboard, and meeting new people.


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