I wrote a small perl program to put spaces between the digits because the vocalizer voice of speech dispatcher does this crazy million ... thing. So, when I have a program that is going to output phone numbers, I put the number through this program. On Mon, 06 May 2024 08:39:36 -0400, Janina Sajka wrote: > > Providing text to speech readback of a string of numeric digits as > individual digits rather than as a number would indeed be useful. > However, I'm not so sure that's a Speakup problem, meaning that I > suspect this is a bug with the TTS itself. > > Historically, TTS engines have assumed responsibility for similar > content interpretations. This has always been problematic and > inappropriate, imo, but getting them to understand that has proven > problematic in my experience. My favorite example is the way Eloquence > (and it's Linux versions) insisted on rendering cd as "cendelas," not > change directory, not compact disc, not even certificate of deposit, but > candelas as if we blind folks were exclusively fixated on measuring > luminosity in some arbitrary direction! > > Rendering strings of numeric digits as digits would actually satisfy the > more common use case, imo. I find it annoyingly difficult to translate a > phone number from a speech rendering that starts with so many billion, > followed by so many million, and then so many thousands. And why? Just > because some developer saw an opportunity to show off how clever they were? > > But to go back to my original point, I don't believe Speakup is > processing any semantic understanding of the text it feeds to the speech > engine. And, that's what it would take to solve this problem in Speakup. > I could be wrong, of course. > > Best, > Janina > > Chime Hart writes: > > Hi All: I think Speakup is an only screen-reader in almost any platform > > without an option to switch to hear single digits while reading. Maybe > > Chromevox may not have this, but just about all others from DOS up through > > Fenrir have offered this in some form. While it may seem like a small thing, > > while reading an Alpine mail index, hearing the word "hundred" feels as if > > it wastes alot of time. If it would be more official I can file a wish-list > > bug against speakup-tools? When I run reportbug, that seems an only package > > to file against. And speaking of outstanding bugs, back on February 20 I > > filed > > #1062507 > > about the DecTalk drivers. Funny thing was, even while reading over what I > > had submitted, settings dropped. I looked around the Speakup drivers > > directory in a newest 6.9 kernel, where a specific change which Samuel had > > helped me with reguarding flush time. 10 is wonderful but in dectlk.c it > > still says 4000. > > In basicly nearly 21years of useing Speakup, an only other wish list item > > would be an exception dictionary. Again, an item in most other > > screen-readers. Thanks so much in advance for listing-and-considering these. > > Chime > > -- > > Janina Sajka (she/her/hers) > Accessibility Consultant https://linkedin.com/in/jsajka > > The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) > Co-Chair, Accessible Platform Architectures http://www.w3.org/wai/apa > > Linux Foundation Fellow > https://www.linuxfoundation.org/board-of-directors-2/ > > -- Your life is like a penny. You're going to lose it. The question is: How do you spend it? John Covici wb2una covici@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
