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Items tagged with: RetroTech


For any enthusiasts of legacy assistive tech, it seems the first source code of the Talks Screen Reader for Nokia 9110 Communicator has been published by one of the original devs. Unbelievable to think that it all started off as a bunch of prerecorded messages supplemented by the ability to spell anything it doesn't have ready letter by letter and plugging in external synthesizers and Braille displays via the serial port:
github.com/mgroeber9110/talx91…
#Accessibility #Blind #RetroTech #ScreenReader


If like me, you were a child of the '90s, you might remember "ReBoot" – a pioneering 3D animated kids series created by Vancouver's own Mainframe Entertainment.

These documentarians have gotten a hold of the original, uncompressed digital masters. The problem is, they're in the D-1 format.

If anyone in the #retrotech community has access to a Bosch BTS D1, or a comparable D1 player/decoder, I urge you to reach out to @ReBootReWind (on Twitter) to help preserve #ReBoot!

globalnews.ca/news/10194517/re…


1990: Welcome to #VIRTUALREALITY | #TomorrowsWorld | #RetroTech youtu.be/8A3lXFsHe_A


Since some time I have been drawn to research Minitel, a French Videotex-based system for accessing information that predates the Internet. It was a revolution in terms of digitalization which made activities such as buying train and plane tickets, signing up for classes and reading newspapers digitalized as early as the 80's. You can read more about it in the following Wikipedia article:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel
There were many devices invented to make Minitel accessible to the blind, although the system itself wasn't designed with this target group in mind. Mostly, they were external speech synthesizers like in the case of Lectel:
lemonde.fr/archives/article/19…
or the Valentine text-to-speech card for the Apple II:
blog.atalan.fr/valentine-carte…
The history of the Eurobraille company, the makers of the popular Esys, Esytime and B.Note Braille displays, starts also with a speech synthesizer for the Minitel terminals.
eurobraille.fr/notre-histoire/
As I found out, however, most of France's blind community at that time did not have access to this kind of technology and Minitel only became accessible on a global scale in the 90's when regular PC's did but then it was almost the time of the Internet so it never gained the same momentum as it did with the society at large. Pity as this could have been an opportunity to push the inclusion of blind and partially sighted people to whole new levels.
Always design with accessibility from the start!
#Accessibility #Blind #AdventCalendar #France #Internet #Minitel #Videotex #RetroTech