Google Developer Podcast: Accessibility

Got a chance to listen to T.V Raman, yesteday, on my bike ride, on the Google Developer Podcast. My guess he’s the absolute world expert on accessibility, from the perspective of 100% reduced vision. (I hope that’s a politically correct way to say it.)

I got a chance to visit with T.V. last year, after walking away with 2nd place in the Etel Telephony Mashup contest. (Oops, did I just say that?) .

Confidential to T.V: I meant to tell you, I was operating at that point on about 2 hours of sleep, due to various travel details, so I might not have been as scintillating as is normal for me. And sorry for leading your dog in the wrong direction as you two led me to the exit.

I came away from that meeting with a clear understanding that in the world of text-to-speech there is a WIDE spectrum, with absolute usability at one end, and absolute functionality at the other.

And here’s the twist. T.V. and his cohorts are at the functionality end. They don’t really care what the voice sounds like, they just crank it up to a million miles an hour and let it rip. On the other hand, you have sighted folks who want the robot to sound like Doris Day, (or Rock Hudson, or, er Gary Grant).

You haven’t lived until you’ve heard talking Emacs read Python code, complete with special voices for function and variable names.

Anyway, I was sorta hoping that T.V. would mention our chat, and RoboCal, but it was not meant to be. He did mention, however, that he is interested in creating voice-based clients for each Google service with an API.

So, for now, I don’t think I’ll tell T.V about the new RoboCal, with turn-by-turn voice driving directions. I need to get a head start on Google.

So, mum’s the word, ok?