Freedom Scientific, Inc.

Glen Gordon

Eric Damery

Joseph K Stephen

Garald Lee Voorhees

Robert Gallo

Ralph Ernest Ocampo

Christian D Hofstader

Joseph Stephen

Roxana Fischer

David Baker

Daniel Simkovitz

James T Datray

Bradley S Davis

Lee Hamilton

Sriram M Ramanathan

Prafuldev Raveendran

Matt Ater

John Palenchar

Vimal P Sojan

Chris Hofstader

Sharon Spencer

Casimir M Wojcik

Gerald Lee Voorhees

A screen reader application traverses each node in a document object model (DOM) for the text stylization. Properties for foreground color, background color, font type, font size and font stylization are algorithmically reduced to an identifier. Each node in the DOM with the same identifier has the same text stylization. Unique and infrequent text stylizations by a webpage author signal a point of interest. The screen reader application locates and navigates to that node in the DOM on behalf or in response to the end user. Points of interest are further identified by a number of additional factors. A first includes percentage of text of having the text stylization versus total text in the DOM. A second includes excluding candidate point of interest nodes having more than 250 characters. Others include imposing minimum font sizes and text contrast ratios to qualify as a point of interest.

Resolving points of interest by text stylization

A method of automatically partitioning a refreshable braille display based on presence of pertinent ancillary alphanumeric content. In an unpartitioned configuration, every braille cell of the refreshable braille display is used to output the primary alphanumeric content. When the refreshable braille display outputs a segment of the primary alphanumeric content having associated ancillary alphanumeric content, such as a footnote or a comment, the braille display is automatically partitioned into a first partition and a second partition. The braille cells of the first partition are allocated for outputting the primary alphanumeric content, while the braille cells of the second partition are allocated for outputting the ancillary alphanumeric content.

Dynamic partitioning of a refreshable braille display based on presence of ancillary alphanumeric content

Detecting points of interest by atypical stylization

Accessibility for vision impaired users is improved with a novel screen reader system. A user interface control of a first application that switches a language applied to text displayed on the first application is identified to a second application. The second application stores an identifier for the user interface control and a value representative of the language selected by the user interface control to a data structure. The second application then listens for user control events occurring on the first application such as focus, click and selection events. When the second application detects the user interface control switching languages the second application changes the default screen reader language to the language of the visual text of the first application. Thus, the text-to-speech output of the visual text is read with the correct speech inflection and pronunciation of the selected language.

Screen reader language switching for user interface

A method of locking magnified screen views including the steps of magnifying a portion of a graphic user interface on a first monitor to establish a first magnified view having upper, lower, left and right boundaries, magnifying a portion of the graphic user interface on a second monitor to establish a second magnified view having upper, lower, left and right boundaries, whereby the graphic user interface of the first monitor is extended in the direction of the second monitor, responsive to an end-user selectable setting, restricting pointer indicia movement to an area defined by the boundaries of each view that are not between first and second monitor, and responsive to pointer indicia moving from first monitor towards second monitor displaying pointer indicia within second magnified view responsive to pointer indicia crossing the boundary of first magnified view in the direction of second monitor.

View locking multi-monitor screen magnifier

A screen reader application for visually impaired users suppresses unwanted content that is output by Braille or text-to-speech. The invention accesses, but does not modify, the document object model of the web page and enumerates web page elements for the end user to either hide or skip to. The end user selections are saved as rules which may be applied according to various levels of scope include web page specific, site specific or web-wide. A screen magnification application for visually impaired users automatically sets the visual focus and magnification level on a web page element according to end-user selection.

Screen reader with customizable web page output

The amount of speech output to a blind or low-vision user using a screen reader application is automatically adjusted based on how the user navigates to a control in a graphic user interface. Navigation by mouse presumes the user has greater knowledge of the identity of the control than navigation by tab keystroke which is more indicative of a user searching for a control. In addition, accelerator keystrokes indicate a higher level of specificity to set focus on a control and thus less verbosity is required to sufficiently inform the screen reader user.

Screen reader with focus-based speech verbosity

A document navigation tool that automatically navigates a document based on previous input from the user. The document navigation tool is utilized each time a page loads. The method recognizes user behavior on pages using patterns, which are based on four criterion: location, frequency, consistency, and scope. If the user has visited the page previously and has established a pattern, the method automatically focuses on the portion of the page indicated by the pattern, e.g. the location on a web page of the link clicked by the user in the user's last three visits to the page. If the user has not visited the page previously, the method logs the events that occur during this visit to the page.

Document navigation method

A screen reader software product for low-vision users, the software having a reader module collecting textual and non-textual display information generated by a web browser or word processor. Font styling, interface layout information and the like are communicated to the end user by sounds broadcast simultaneously rather than serially with the synthesized speech to improve the speed and efficiency in which information may be digested by the end user.

Screen reader having concurrent communication of non-textual information

A screen reader software product including a pattern store containing at least one user-definable array of keywords relating to a subject of interest and skim reading module adapted to apply the at least one array of keywords to a target document whereby only portions of the target document matching the at least one array of keywords are output by the screen reader software to an end user.

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Madison, WI, United States of America

Glen Gordon