Dolphin Newsletter - November 2005
Index:
- From Steve Palmer and Noel Duffy.
- Pocket Hal is released.
- Dolphin Tutor is formally released.
- Dolphin Producer is in the final stages of testing.
- What's happening in Development - from John Rye.
- What's happening in Sales - from Steve Bennett.
- Events.
- The Dolphin Pen goes from strength to strength.
- Staff News.
From Steve Palmer and Noel Duffy.
Within Dolphin we have spoken a great deal about serving a wider constituency: we are starting to refer to solutions for print impairment instead of just visual impairment and our development decisions are heavily focused on the principles of universal design. The underlying technology required to help a dyslexic student is not vastly different to that found in our existing product range. In the past year we have spent a great deal of time speaking to international collaborators from blind and print impaired groups around the world. We have been involved in a number of major projects in the UK, Sweden and Holland to bring information to life. The upshot of all this is a new range of exciting products scheduled for release in the last quarter of 2005.
After over two years of development Pocket Hal was launched at the beginning of November. Pocket Hal follows in the slip stream of the Pen and reinforces our goal to be recognized as the best software supplier to the access sector. We're also very keen that our clients get the full benefit of a sustainable technology model by enjoying all the benefits of mainstream PDAs. As PDAs get better Dolphin clients will be able to take full advantage without having to purchase a whole new system.
Dolphin Tutor, our new reading and writing software for the dyslexia market, was launched last month to glowing reports. A great deal of thought went in to its release and special effort was made to ensure the training and support material was in place to make sure it was easy to use. This will be followed this month by the release of Dolphin Producer. Dolphin Producer has created a lot of excitement as the first DAISY production tool to be usable by an individual to create easy to use, instant DAISY content, at the press of a button and with the added option to create a CD version, books can be created for playback in portable hardware players as well as software ones. Universities, schools and libraries are already showing a great deal of interest. A couple of further products are in the pipeline and we hope to release these before the end of the year.
As we get to the end of the year we're keen to bottle the creativity in the development department both in the UK and Sweden and continue with an exciting program for next year.
Pocket Hal is released.
November has been a busy month for Dolphin, with two major product releases and another on its way:
Pocket Hal was formally released at the recent RNIB Techshare Conference on 17th November. As you know Pocket Hal is a full screen reader, based upon the desk top edition of Dolphin's Hal screen reader. It offers users full speech support, as well as Braille support for most of the popular PDAs on the market.
Pocket Hal is available to order for English language PDAs running Pocket PC 2003 (SE). The first English release will not support non-English language packs (support for these will follow); however it will include a wide choice of synthesisers for reading text, documents and emails in many other languages.
Pocket Hal will shortly be available for Pocket PC language versions French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. Support will also be added for downloadable language packs in other Scandinavian and European languages.
This is what some of the testers had to say about Pocket Hal:
"Pocket Hal, combined with my Windows CE based PDA, allows me to access everything I need, on the move. Pocket Hal has given me access to an environment that until now was totally off limits to those of us who are blind or visually impaired" - Jim from the USA.
"Dolphin has created a screen reader that will work on my PDA and allows me to access all my popular PDA applications using the PDA buttons. There is no need to ever touch the screen and I only need to use my Bluetooth keyboard when I am inputting information" - Jim from Colorado, USA.
Dolphin Tutor is formally released.
Dolphin Tutor is a new education product designed to help anyone with print impairment and literacy difficulties. It has been designed to help people with reading and writing difficulties to create, read, view and check text and includes many useful features such as predictive text, a thesaurus and dictionary. It works by adding a simple easy to read toolbar to your common Microsoft™ applications, such as Word®, Excel® and Internet Explorer.
Dolphin Producer is in the final stages of testing.
I am sure that you have all been following the developments of Dolphin's latest package for the creation of Digital Talking Books, called Dolphin Producer. Dolphin Producer combines a simple word reading tool and a revolutionary DAISY Digital Talking Book (DTB) creation tool. It allows on-screen information to be converted into audio and read back directly from the computer, as well as quickly converting the on-screen text into a fully synchronised text and audio DTB - all at the push of a single button.
All of the functionality of Dolphin Producer is available from the simple to use toolbar. The toolbar is automatically loaded within Microsoft ® Word ®, and can be positioned anywhere on the screen. By using the simple Dolphin Producer toolbar, Word ® documents can be read back instantly from within Word ®, with the text being highlighted in time with the corresponding audio.
Text colours and word highlighting colours can all be customised to suit the individual's requirements. Navigation controls allow the user to move through the document quickly and easily, by word, sentence or paragraph.
Once the DTB has been created it can be played back on any DAISY software or hardware player, including Dolphin's EaseReader, which is included with Dolphin Producer. Alternatively the audio can be played on any MP3 player.
Now everyone can create their own DTBs at the push of a button!
What's happening in Development - from John Rye.
Pocket Hal, the first complete screen-reader for off-the-shelf PDAs is now released, and so Development attention now moves onto the next release of the desk-top version of Supernova, Hal, Lunar and LunarPlus.
The updated, improved and easy-to-use Cicero OCR package is completing its beta test stage and will be released shortly. Cicero, combined with a scanner, allows users to scan documents and have them read back directly from the computer. Users can expect significant improvements in character recognition accuracy with the latest version of Cicero.
Pocket Orpheus has been released alongside Pocket Hal and Pocket SAM for PDAs. Pocket Orpheus includes reduced size options for the natural sounding voices. Work on a new Swedish voice, Anders is also in progress and will be incorporated into the next release of Orpheus Pronouncer.
Work continues incorporating new UK Grade 2 Braille standards into all Dolphin Products supporting Grade 2 Braille.
What's happening in Sales - from Steve Bennett.
As you can appreciate this has been a very busy month for everyone at Dolphin, with several new products becoming available. We are currently training all of our dealers on the new products, and organising the role out of new language support for the products.
Earlier in the month Dolphin staff attended the TifloInnova conference and exhibition in Madrid, where Pocket Hal was reviewed and was extremely well received. The Dolphin Pen was also very popular, and as reported last month, more and more people are now realising the benefits of the Dolphin Pen.
Dolphin staff also attended the recent RNIB Techshare Conference in Birmingham. This provided the launch platform for Pocket Hal, so as you can imagine there was a lot of interest in Pocket Hal during the two day programme. We also ran pre-conference workshop on the creation of DAISY Digital Talking Books, where people were able to use EasePubliser and Dolphin Producer to create their very own DAISY books.
Events.
BETT 2006
Dolphin will be exhibiting at the forthcoming BETT 2006, which will be held on 11th - 14th January 2006 at Olympia in London. This is the leading UK education show and is open between 10am - 6pm daily.
If you are planning to attend the show, please drop by and speak to the Dolphin team.
Special Needs Exhibition Worcester
Dolphin will also be sponsoring a new exhibition in Worcester, which will show case Dolphin's range of access and education solutions. The exhibition will also include support from the British Dyslexia Association, the Dyslexia Institute and the Worcester Association for the Blind, so visitors can get expert advice and information on the day. There will also be several access technology dealers present, so you will be able to get demonstrations of their latest products. The exhibition will be held on 26th January at the Worcester Guildhall, which is located in the middle of Worcester High Street, a short walk from Foregate Street train station. Admission is free and the exhibition is open between 10am and 4pm.
The Dolphin Pen goes from strength to strength.
Since its launch the Dolphin Pen has grown in popularity, so much so that many other access manufacturers are offering their products on pens or thumb drives. We are often asked what makes the Dolphin Pen any better than others on the market, here we identify the strengths of the Dolphin Pen that set it apart from others:
- The Dolphin Pen provides full and unlimited access to your software regardless of which computer you use it on - there are no limits on the functionality or limits on the time of use. Many other products that are available only offer limited access to the software (some of which are freely available to download onto your own thumb drive device). Other popular thumb drive devices only offer time limited access to your software up to 40 minutes at a given time - in effect offering only a demonstration version not a full unlimited version.
- The Dolphin Pen will work as a full version on any computer that has the Dolphin Interceptor installed. The Dolphin Interceptor is available as a free download from the Dolphin website, and when installed this will automatically make your PC "Dolphin Friendly". In order for other popular thumb drive screen readers to function as a full copy (rather than a 40 minute demonstration version), an authorization key has to be installed on each of the computers where the thumb drive will be used. Other screen readers will only run as a full version if it can find local or network authorization already in place on the computer you are using. Otherwise you are only able to run it as a 40 minute demonstration.
- If you wanted to have the same levels of portability and mobility as the Dolphin Pen from another thumb drive screen reader, you would need to not only carry your thumb drive but also your USB dongle for product authorization. Not only would you need to carry two USB devices with you, but for the screen reader to function fully, the computer would need two spare USB ports. With the Dolphin Pen the authorization is present on the Pen, and so you do not need the full product installed or authorized on the individual computers and you do not need to carry around any additional authorisation dongle.
- The Dolphin Pen includes patented anti-corruption protection, designed to help protect your software and your computer. Each Pen produced by Dolphin has been quality assured and guaranteed to be safe. The last thing you want is for your access software to malfunction or even worse to adversely affect your PC or network settings. All Dolphin Pens come with Dolphin's free lifetime technical support.
- Beware that USB thumb drives vary greatly in quality and integrity, if you decide to use your own thumb drive and download a screen reader onto it from the internet, there is no guarantee that the device will not be corrupted. Whilst it appears that users are being offered greater flexibility in the type of thumb drive they want, by being able to buy their own and then download a screen reader, there are many low cost USB devices and many imitations available for purchase; all of which offer no guarantee against corruption.
- The Supernova Pen offers a combined full screen reader and screen magnifier in a single package, providing full support for a range of visual impairments. Other products that are available offer screen readers or screen magnifiers on a thumb drive. In some cases you are able to include both on a single thumb drive, but this does mean that users would need to have two different products on their thumb drive in order to have the same range of access as that offered by Supernova.
Staff News.
Dolphin is pleased to announce the arrival of Paul Thompson. Paul joins the Sales team as the Education Sales Manager for North America, Europe and Australasia. Paul has extensive experience of the Education software market and has worked within the assistive technology industry for over 4 years. Paul joins Dolphin having previously worked for TextHelp.
Lisa McBride, who works in the Accounts Department, is also now on maternity leave. Lisa plans to return to work in 6 months, after the birth of her second child. Everyone at Dolphin wishes Lisa well.
Congratulations go to Stefan Sollinger and his wife Zoe, on the birth of their baby son Etienne. Etienne was born on 15 th November and weighed 8lb 7oz (3.8kg), both mother and baby are doing well.
