h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

There is now a new version of NVDA (non visual desktop assistant), out, released actually In May 2007, version 0.5.
The earlier version of this I'd tried, and found made the PC a bit unstable.
This newer version has seemed to got rid of this problem amongst other bugs the update has removed.
Its a free, (freeware?) open source screenreader for Windows XP and Vista. Its quite differnt to most other screenreaders as it doesn't use video intercept drivers or display hooks.
Its a very low system useage piece of software, its very fast and doesn't slow down the PC like some other (JAWS) screenreaders, this is, probably, I guess because it doesn't involve the connections to teh PCs video card etc.
It works well with IE, though on the NVDA website they ssay its best at working with Firefox.
It hadnles most menus and the desktop etc in Windows pretty well.
The freeware NVDA comes with its own software synthesiser ESpeak, but also runs using SAPI4 and SAPI5 synthesisers ( the microsoft type software synths, useually installed along with Windows).
The NVDA software has 13 languages, and its makers claim it will work for any language, so long as the user has a speech synthesiser compatible with the software in that langage (E.G., A SAPI4 or SAPI5 synth in the desired language).

IT works to varying degrees of sucess with Wordpad, Notepad, office/word etc.

The website is
http://www.nvda-project.org/

If I remember I'll try update this infomration in to the guide entry itself soon.

Other stuff.

Dolphin now also seem to be doing a screenreader for mobil/smart phones, a smaller version of HAL. This is in addition to the 'pocket hal' which is for PDAs.

I also think theres a version of mobile speak/mobilespeak that can be used on some PDAs as well as the version that can be used on smartphones.

TALKS is still seemingly the most popular for mobile phones (in the UK at least), not least because this bit of software (which is at least £150), can be gotten free if a mobile phone is purchased on contract from Vodafone. (Mind I also know of a few people who've been using just the free demo version of it for years on their handsets) Oh, and the versions of some of the software has almost certianly move up now, I think most the screenreaders now claim to be compatible with Vista.

I'm just bumping this reminder to update - as a reminder! Do it!