We have begun this site to figure out how to put together extremely low cost assistive technology for the blind such as talking computers.

The fundamental problem is the high cost of assistive technology that is available for the blind.

Screen reading software for example, can cost as much as US$1495 and this does not include hardware.

These prices are not a problem for those who live in a wealthy country and get hardware and software purchased by a government agency; however, when the agency refuses to buy the needed technology or in the case of those living in developing countries, these prices become an enormous obstacle.

Being blind myself, I know it is hard for someone sighted to understand how big an impact this has on the education of the blind and their employment prospects. Just to give an example, unemployment among the blind is about 70% in most wealthy countries and exceeds 90% in most developing countries. Perhaps more shocking, among the estimated 6.4 million blind or visually impaired children in developing countries, over 90% have no access to education.

While I understood the potential of free and open source software and mass-produced hardware to improve access to information, education, and employment for the blind, it was not until my 2005 article on make magazine that I started meeting the right people.

Meet for example David Rowe and our project to make routers talk and Jouke Visser and his project to help children communicate.

We want to produce a very cheap talking computer and the WRT45G router meets some of our needs: Mass-produced hardware, inexpensive, widely available, and a thriving free and open source software community hacking it.

Having said that, we welcome other platforms that might meet these needs and help us get to an inexpensive talking computer.

Why a talking computer?

It is not a computer we seek in the practical sense, for a blind kid a talking computer has the potential to be a notebook, dictionary, text book,
encyclopedia, calculator, and much more.

Anybody with experience with embedded systems or any device that can be hacked and is powerful enough to run a software speech synthesizer, can help us. Once we have one or more devices that run Linux and have enough power and RAM to run something like Festival or eSpeak and Emacs in combination with Emacspeak or Speechd-el; then we will have the building blocks for a system that can really help people.

If you are concerned this duplicates the effort of the OLPC or Classmate projects, please reconsider:

• We seek a solution that has a sub-$100 price point;
• We want hardware/software solutions that can be bought freely by individuals, NGOs, and companies, and deployed or used in any way they see fit;
• We want hardware and software that is as free as possible, so that anyone can build on the effort and contribute back to the community; and finally
• We want this relatively small initiative to have the greatest impact possible by using software and hardware standards as well as off-the-shelf
• products to avoid duplication of effort and to build on the work of others.

Fernando Botelho