[ghibertii]

A glaring weakness of OS X is the lack of a screen reader for the visually impaired. This could hamper the adoption of OS X in the K-12 and higher education institutions public labs due to the fear of lawsuits. (ADA)

If you are seeking that next application to write this may be it. If you would like some more information check out the MacAccessibility site and the article on this topic.

http://www.maccessibility.com/archive/000633.php

[King Bob On The Cob]

Originally posted by ghibertii:
A glaring weakness of OS X is the lack of a screen reader for the visually impaired. This could hamper the adoption of OS X in the K-12 and higher education institutions public labs due to the fear of lawsuits. (ADA)

If you are seeking that next application to write this may be it. If you would like some more information check out the MacAccessibility site and the article on this topic.

http://www.maccessibility.com/archive/000633.php

What? Mac OS X has what I consider the best feature set for the visually impaired.
Check out the accessibility pref pane.
You can have a zoom, Invert the colors, make everything be spoken. It really is a good thing for people that are hard of seeing.

[seb2]

Originally posted by King Bob On The Cob:
...make everything be spoken...

If your app is English, yes. Does not work for any other language.

[Millennium]

Originally posted by seb2:
If your app is English, yes. Does not work for any other language.

Apple had a set of voices for Mexican Spanish at one point, actually; I don't know what happened to them in OSX.

But you're right; their speech efforts have been heavily-oriented towards the US, at the expense of basically all other languages. This bothers me, not from a standpoint of political sensitivity, but from the fact that this is a great technology which Apple has not yet tapped to its full potential.

I've toyed with the idea of trying to build a basic aural browser at some point (not a screenreader, but an actual Web browser which renders the page as speech, complete with ACSS support). But to be honest, I have no idea where to begin there either. What kind of interface should an aural browser even have?

FUN FACT: If you're into anime, you might want to check out Serial Expeeriments Lain. Apple's "Whisper" voice sees heavy use in the series.