I got an email this afternoon over the Irl-dean list from Stuart (NCBI) who is currently involved in a European project called ‘Dicomp.S.Net’. which aims to make free a Screen Reader called ‘Thunder’. Thunder is a screen reader which makes everything talk.

The idea of a *free screen reader* is very long over due if you ask me, granted you can download JAWS and run it in 30 minute mode but would you like to have to continually restart your PC, I don’t think so, so free=Happy Days.

Today I took some time out to download and install Thunder. The download and installation process is straight forward, always a good thing. I found that getting used to Thunder after using JAWS is like the transition from Windows to Mac, but once you come to grips with it, its as good as it gets. The user manuals are well written and easy to understand. With a few key commands you can move around documents

The HOME key takes you to the beginning of a line and top of a list such as your files or emails.
CTRL HOME takes you to the top of a document.
The END key takes you to the end of a line and the last item of a list. “

Probably the best command to be familiar with is Read whole window ‘Caps Lock + F’. If you get lost “Help” is available at any time within the screen reader program.

Thunder also uses musical tones as you move about the screen which is intended to help you build up a mental picture of where you are and where things are on the screen. These tones go higher as you move up the screen and lower as you move down the screen. The wooden tones go higher as you move to the right and lower as you move to the left of the screen, deadly.

Another cool feature of Thunder is the NOVICE MODE (on/off: ALT + N) while in novice mode you hear lots of speech prompts to remind you of what you can do which may be useful to a beginner, but it may become distracting, again simple to disable.

The target audience for Thunder is the home user and I can see many a house hold installing it if they knew about it that is.

This free software could also a great benefit to our silver surfers and people with reading disabilities, like wise young children could also use it when reading larger documents on the web.

On the Thunder home page they ask us (the users) to “please think about ways you might support what we are doing” well, we can all help by simply providing a link from within our own websites accessibility statement to download Thunder, now that’s not going to break the bank is it.

If you dont have an accessibility statement there is no time like the present… basically your accessibility statement can start by demonstrating your commitment to making your website accessible or simply inform your users of your current level of accessibility. Ping me if need some assistance is writing one
I’ve also picked up from The Blind Blogger they have plans to create a version of Thunder for people with learning disabilities and, of course, to offer many other languages, again all good news.