raman pfaff
chief architect, online publishing

Speech Xtra Prototype • home • explorelearning

Most recent update: March 3, 2003. Improved the 'x' feature (frequency playback of graph), additional feedback when moving grid, and made sure the 'download xtra if needed' was incorporated for the Speech Xtra.

When the latest version of Director came out I did a quick prototype of one of our Gizmos to see how quickly we could integrate the new Speech Xtra in to our keyboard accessible Gizmos. The integration was relatively simple thanks to our well structured code underlying the Gizmos. We are currently developing the next generation of our 'brain' for the Gizmos, and the Speech Xtra will be integrated properly in to our existing coding for greater accessibility.

Before using keyboard commands be sure to click on the Gizmo to make it the active item on the page.

The following keys allow for keyboard accessibility:

• Tab, moves to next accessible item. (or n)
• Shift-Tab moves to the previous accessible item. (or Shift-n)
• Enter (or RETURN), clicks an accessible item.
• H, lists the keyboard commands.
• D, states the domain.
• R, states the range.
• G, states the graph region.
• V, states the graph values.
• E, states the equation.
• O, states the introductory overview.
• J, moves accessible objects to the left.
• L, moves accessible objects to the right.
• I, moves accessible objects upward.
• K, moves accessible objects downward.
• X, plays the relative tone across the graph over 5 seconds.

The prototype above was done rather quickly so there is little error checking for many things. It is a good idea to just use the gizmo with the keyboard and not use your mouse (didn't yet check to see what happens on mouse AND keyboard interactions with the voice).

Since we are now working on getting the Speech Capabilities integrated in to our next generation engine for all our content, development on this particular prototype have probably ended...unless of course someone notices a serious bug that causes a crash, or most anything that is a real issue. Drop me a line if you spot anything.

Authored by R. Pfaff from ExploreLearning. This is a work-in-progress - last updated on 12/4/02. More improvement will be made when I get a bit of time.

Note: This has only been tested on MacOSX with the latest version of the Shockwave Plug-in.

For MacOS Classic it is important that you have the Speech Xtra in the System Folder/Extensions/Macromedia/Shockwave folder. (Still haven't tested to see how the latest version of the plug-in handles the speech xtra).

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