Mobile Speak 3.40 and Limited Observations

It wasn’t a while ago that I posted the news of the release of Mobile Speak 3.40 on this blog. I was planning to compare it with TALKS 3.51, however, Code Factory’s sales department didn’t reply to my requests for a Mobile Speak demo license. Actually, I got a Mobile Speak 3.32 30-day demo license in early January, but I can’t use it with Mobile Speak 3.40. As a consequence, I asked Code Factory a few times to provide me with another demo license for the purpose of reviewing the application on this blog, but they haven’t yet sent me a reply. As a consequence, what you read below is far away from a full-blown review because I was limited to 10 minutes of Mobile Speak per session, and didn’t find it comfortable to restart my N82 every 10 minutes. If and when I get the demo license, I’ll publish a more in-depth Mobile Speak review here.

 

Getting started

As with Nuance TALKS, Mobile Speak requires the installation of two files. One is the screen reader itself, and the other is the TTS engine. After going to the Mobile Speak download page, I ran the wizard and downloaded the Fonix US English package of Mobile Speak. This gives me the familiar DECTalk voice in US English.

When installed, all Mobile Speak icons are placed in a folder titled Mobile Speak. This folder can be located on the main menu, and allows users to start/stop Mobile Speak or configure it.

 

The 3.40 improvements

As this is not a comprehensive Mobile Speak review, I directly jump to the improvements found in V3.40. First of all, the music player is now accessible with Mobile Speak. With the 3.32 release, I couldn’t use the music player and Mobile Speak together. Also, Mobile Speak 3.40 can recognize progress bars, and you need to press the joystick up or down to hear the progress bar indicators.

Mobile Speak can now play a sound upon starting up. I find the playback process problematic on my N82. First, it gets played before the standard Nokia start-up sound, thereby confusing many users. Second, it’s quite louder than the Nokia start-up sound, and its volume cannot be altered at all. It’s worth mentioning that the use of such a sound can be disabled in the Configure Mobile Speak window; however, once enabled, the problems can be observed readily.

With the 3.40 release, Mobile Speak users can adjust the volume of the Nokia TTS separately, and this is useful for calls. As before, Mobile Speak does a good job of reading the standby icons without any delays whatsoever.

 

Problems

Mobile Speak 3.40 is a bit sluggish while navigating in lists and different menus. Although things have dramatically improved with newer Mobile Speak releases, there’s still some work to be done in this regard. Moreover, from time to time I experience total speech cutouts for a few seconds before being able to resume my normal activities. Finally, the Configure Mobile Speak window is as sluggish as before, meaning it requires a couple of seconds to become active.

Mobile Speak 3.40 and more Important Changes

Yesterday I reported that Code Factory has released Mobile Speak V3.40. I managed to find a list of new features and bug fixes on the Code Factory web site, but today I found more new features and bug fixes in the TXT file which accompanies Mobile Speak installation files. The following is a list of such modifications which I couldn’t mention in my post yesterday, and the list is quite impressive.

• Now speaking the percent complete in progress bars (e.g. during installation). Press one of the joystick keys while the progress bar is being displayed to hear the current percent complete.
• Fixed problem in some of the latest 9.2 phones where the music player lists were not being spoken correctly.
• Symbian 9: Made Phone Pilot application accessible.
• Symbian 9: “Keypad Locked” and “Keypad Unlocked” are now spoken when Mute on Keypad Lock is set to ON.
• Symbian 9: Changed Alarm status when pressing Edit + Left soft key so that it only speaks Clock alarms (previously it spoke Calendar alarms too).
• Symbian 9: Multiple alarms are now spoken when pressing Edit + Left soft key, if more than one alarm is set.
• Symbian 9: Fixed issue where pressing Edit + 9 from standby screen (to read the time) was sometimes being cut half way through speaking.
• Symbian 9: Fixed problem that sometimes caused license to expire after a call, when Nokia TTS is not registered.
• Symbian 9.1: Improved stability when initializing Nokia voices.
• Symbian 9.2: Fixed problem when connected to a bluetooth headset and answering a call by pressing the headset’s key, the phone could restart.
• Fixed problem which could cause speech to stop when switching voices between the same TTS inside Configure Mobile Speak.
• Fixed problem on N71 where dialing screen may not have been read.
• E51: Changed edit key to be the Calendar hotkey (the key below the menu key) instead of the Voice Command key.
• 6120: Edit key remapping is disabled now inside Camera app, so that camera key works as normal when camera is in foreground.
• Fixed problem where some notes and lists were not being spoken immediately (e.g. during installation).
• Not speaking any more when screen saver starts.
• Nokia Standard TTS: Fixed problem where lower case chars were not pronounced correctly.
• Fixed problem which could cause some applications with editors to close.
• Fixed problem where comma was being spoken while speaking date and time (Edit + 9) with punctuation set to all.
• Fixed problem where caller ID announcement was sometimes being interrupted.
• Braille: Fixed output of signal level when pressing edit + left soft key.
• Braille: New Braille 8tb tables in Russian, and G1 and G2 tables in French.

I’m going to give this new Mobile Speak release a serious try, and you’ll see my findings here.

Mobile Speak for Symbian Updated to V3.40

Last Friday (March 7^th) Code Factory released Mobile Speak for Symbian V3.40. This release offers the following features.

• Support for the new and responsive High Quality Loquendo voices on Symbian 9 phones in UK and US English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Polish and Portuguese.
• Full support for the latest features of Wayfinder Access V2.0.
• Unique adaptation for the new Vicinity Feed screen. Mobile Speak only reads the text when it changes. For example, if the GPS application says “walk 200 meters and turn left” and then changes to “walk 100 meters and turn left”, Mobile Speak won’t repeat the whole sentence. Instead, it will say “100″, “50″, “30″, etc. If users want to hear the whole sentence repeated, all they need to do is to press Edit+#.
• New easy-to-understand direction mode based on a standard clock. For instance, instead of saying “The hotel is in 10 meters at 270 degrees”, Mobile Speak will say “The hotel is in 10 meters at 9 o’clock.
• Full translations for 10 new languages: Mobile Speak can now speak Hindi, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Cantonese, Serbian, Slovak, Tagalog, Romanian, Urdu and Indonesian. Users can listen to Mobile Speak in any of these languages if the firmware of their Symbian 9 phone uses the desired language. Once the firmware displays the language in question, the Nokia voice for that language can be selected from the Settings application of the Mobile Speak control panel.
• Optional audible tone which indicates that Mobile Speak is loaded on a Symbian 9 phone.
• “Volume on call” feature, allowing the user to set one volume level when Mobile Speak is operating normally and another when the program speaks while the user is in a phone call.
• “Voice on call” feature, allowing users to choose between Nokia and NokiaHQ text-to-speech (TTS) on a call.
• New user dictionary tool for Symbian 9, which allows users to customize the way words and phrases are spoken by the voice they use.
• Accessibility for all Active Standby screen plug-in items when the Active Standby screen is activated.
• The PIN code entry screen is now spoken on startup in Symbian 9.2 phones.
• WLAN status and Keyboard lock are read when Edit + left soft is pressed.

This is a worthwhile upgrade for Mobile Speak users and can be downloaded from here, after taking the wizard. Kudus to Code Factory for such a nice release.

What is running in the background?

When S60 FP1 devices were being manufactured, everyone tried to make sense of what the Fp1 platform was to offer. The benefits are numerous, from faster reboot time to the availability of more RAM and a tweaked OS. However, one of the neat features of FP1 devices is related to how users can tell whether an application is running in the background without having to go to the “task manager”. This has become possible via the addition of a new icon to the menu. When an application runs in the background and you reach the name of that application on the menu, a new icon will notify you of its activity in the background.

What does this mean? It means that a screen reader like Nuance TALKS can easily label that icon, and users can also do it themselves. To do it, first press TALKS key+long 4 to activate the TALKS Graphics mode. Then go to the menu, open an app like Contacts, and press the Menu key to move to the Menu again without actually closing Contacts. You’ll notice that TALKS reads the name of 3 icons before it says “Contacts”. Now move to the Contacts app, close it, and move to the Menu. This time, TALKS just reads the name of 2 icons because Contacts is no longer running. This helps you become familiar with the icon name which is used to indicate if an application is open in the background.

Having recognized the name of that icon, open an application from the Menu, return to the Menu without closing that application, locate the application you’ve opened, and use the TALKS Object Viewer, TALKS key+long Select, to locate and label that icon. Alternatively, if you own an N82 and want to make use of this feature without labeling that icon, just post a comment and I’ll send my labeled N82 icons to your email address. For your information, when you send a comment to my blog posts, I receive an email which tells me what your email is.

How does “accessibility” fit into Nokia’s strategies?

These days, thanks to Symbian S60 screen readers, we’re allowed to use cell phones and take advantage of the latest enhancements which companies like Nokia incorporate into their cell phones. However, apart from the features screen readers provide, do you think Nokia is playing a constructive role in making the situation better? I think the answer to this question is at least partially manifested in a web site called Nokia Accessibility.

Set up by Nokia, this web site outlines the features Nokia incorporates into its handsets to help people with various types of disability. Under the section titled Vision, Nokia provides a list of features which have been either designed or tweaked with the visually impaired in mind. They are:

• Text-to-speech,
• Nokia PC Suite,
• Nokia Audiobooks,
• Nokia Conversation,
• Message Reader,
• Product manuals in alternate formats.

While Nokia deserves our praise in this regard, in my opinion a lot more should be done to improve the aforementioned items and features. For instance, the TTS engine Nokia ships with many handsets is inferior to commercial ones. Just take a look at how the Nokia TTS sounds when used with a screen reader like Nuance TALKS. True, some Nokia handsets have RealSpeak voices, but this is not the popular trend to equip each and every top-selling handset with an engine like this. Moreover, recent releases of the Nokia PC Suite are poorly accessible to say the least, and Nokia simply provides the following instructions to make using the PC Suite with Windows screen readers a smoother experience:

• Disable the autorun when PC Suite is loaded. (You can’t use JAWS or a screen reader with autorun on any of the devices.)
• To disable the autorun, press and hold the shift key while the CD is being recognized. Then choose “manually install” PC Suite with help from JAWS.
• When PC Suite finishes installing, connect the phone to the PC, go to Explorer, and find the third-party text-to-speech software installer.
• Install the text-so-speech application.

Yes, the typo also comes from Nokia! At any rate, I’m sure many of you have noticed that even installing Nokia PC Suite with its graphical buttons which must be labeled first is a pain in the neck.

Nokia Audiobooks and Nokia Conversation are new concepts whose material applications are not, currently at least, totally compatible with Symbian screen readers. Also, the PDF files Nokia provides for its products are accessible to Windows screen readers; however, they make use of graphics rather than text blocks to mention keys and hot keys, thereby preventing visually impaired users from reading them.

At the end of the day, I hate to be called an “accessibility hawk” by you. I’ve been using Nokia handsets for years, and I truly believe in what Nokia has done to help people with disabilities, and compared with other companies, it’s well ahead of the game. However, it shouldn’t stop here. As for software issues, I think Nokia’s Accessibility department should work with screen reader developers so as to release a product with fewer accessibility glitches. As a case in point, when 3^rd Edition Nokia handsets were made available, visually impaired users lost the ability to use their screen readers on a call, and it took more than a year for screen reader developers to fix this glitch, partially at least. And currently Nokia Search is inaccessible to all Symbian screen reader users. Here the bottom line is that screen reader manufacturers shouldn’t start work on a particular handset when it just reaches the market. In the first place, how long did it take for Nuance and Code Factory to release their products for 3^rd Edition cell phones?

What else do you think should be done to alter the current situation?