2018-05-07 16:29:50

Posted this in the off topic room.  But as there is a $100 typing teacher listed in the game in the database, please allow me this liberty, Dark.  Given how important keyboard skils are to people with sight loss I am rather shocked that The RNIB sell a typing tutor for £66 and ACB promote a typing teacher for over $100.  Ok rant over, so I did something about it.  I wrote a free one.
Rockys audio typing tutor
This program is designed to be a simple but practical guide to learning to touch type. Good keyboard skills are vital for any VI computer user. The audio typing tutor is a complete training resource to take the student from beginner to confident touch typist. Features: Finger exercises, word exercises, and whole sentence exercises. Accuracy scores to track your progress and typing speed feedback as you advance. Ability to adjust audio speeds, audio voice and audio volumes. Ability to choose a variety of high contrast solutions, and font sizes. Has a variety of music to choose from as you type. Has auto detection and support for screen readers. The program comes with a self installer and full instructions are available within the program. This release is the full Version 1.0 release date 07 May 2018.
Given the importance of keyboard skills for our community, please post up my link on any forum that is appropriate.  I sincerely hope this free software will be useful.

Try my free games and software at www.rockywaters.co.uk

2018-05-07 19:03:45 (edited by Naruto 2018-05-07 19:04:26)

Thank you. this beats paying 50 bucks. lol

Blindness isn't a disability, but a diffrent way of seeing things

2018-05-07 20:31:14

That's what its out there for, please enjoy.

Try my free games and software at www.rockywaters.co.uk

2018-05-08 02:33:52

This is some good news indeed. If you want, I can also get it added to your page on the audiogames archive.

2018-05-08 02:47:04

Hi Rocky.

yeah, there is a talking typing tutor in the db. As with the looktellvoiceover tutorial this is because as well as what it does, it also  lessons which interact and act as games, and the exercises you've got definitely count that way, so I'll certainly be giving this a db page.

Just a couple of comments on the program.
First I noticed a miner bug. When looking at the exercises list, the menu seemed to scroll off the screen  so I missed some choices before the screen scrolled down to them, so likely there is a resolution question here.

Second, I was wondering if or not you were allowed to use the back space key? since it was something I wasn't sure of and might explain why my accuracy rating didn't exactly work out as expected, either that or I was typing before the game finished speaking and so it was only picking up partial input, though checking normally with Nvda things seemed okay.

third, you might consider a progress meter to tell someone how many of a given exercise they've done. The first time I tried the letters exercise I actually quit with escape because I didn't think it was going to end.
It might be nice to have an indication of progress on this somewhere, for example an audio ding when you submit an entry which got higher in pitch the closer to fulfilling the exercise quota you got (togglable in settings).

Lastly as suggestions for the future, it would be comparatively easy to add an extra game or two to this to make  entertaining for someone to practice without having to do exercises.

For example, I recall a game we used to play in primary school called shoot the spaceship, this was rather like space invaders accept there was just the one ship that flew left and right getting lower. It was made up of one letter. To fire your gun you had to hit the key for that letter on the keyboard, it'd be very easy to do this in audio by having a repeated spoken letter go left and right and you hit a key to blast it.

another might be a boppit or simon style game with spoken letters, either home keys, above home  or the hole keyboard.

You could also have games with substituting sounds for words. For example at the start of the game you could be told that you'd need to type "bob" everytime you heard a ding, or Jane everytime you heard a dong and then be given a list of names with the odd ding or dong thrown in (to make it even more fun you could have more sounds and more substitutions, for example at ten names have a third sound name added, at twenty names a fourth and so on.

You could then have a game where you had to type out a short  story in sentence form for example "ding went to the shops and bought a present for dong. He bought her some flowers because dong was fond of flowers, though since Ding was allergic to tulips he avoided those and bought dong some daffodils"

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-05-08 10:10:43

Wow Dark, some great ideas, will consider what I can do for version 2.  I will be looking at the exercise scroll.  As far as the possible input bug goes, the input and the output are independent and yes the backspace key works as expected.  One issue however is that different screen readers echo the backspace in different ways.  Hoping theres nothing broken there, but I will check it anyways.  Im always wanting to hear about bugs or improvements, thanks.

Try my free games and software at www.rockywaters.co.uk

2018-05-08 10:14:10

John, yes please and thankyou.

Try my free games and software at www.rockywaters.co.uk

2018-05-08 11:16:26

It wasn't so much echoing of backspace that was the problem Rocky, I know where the NVda settings are for such things, it was more that I wondered if using backspace affected your final accuracy skcore or not.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-05-08 19:19:53

If you type ASDG and backspace and type F then press space bar, the program correctly inputs ASDF in the normal way.  You can still get 100% accuracy like this.  However if you type ASDG then press space bar, the program will give you a miss for that sequence and read out the next letter combination.  Words work in the same way.  By the way each exercise is made to last 10 to 20 minutes depending on typing speed.  The experienced typer may get a lower than expected accuracy due to boredom, it was the case with me while testing.  Hence I tried to make the word exercises a little amusing.  To reinforce Z practice for example zany wizards zap crazy zooming zebras and so on..

Try my free games and software at www.rockywaters.co.uk

2018-05-09 00:36:41

Dark, checked out the exercise list, and reckon you are right about the screen resolution.  What resolution are you using by the way?

Try my free games and software at www.rockywaters.co.uk

2018-05-11 03:51:16

Downloading now, this will be great for teaching my son to type. Thanks for this.

Stevie-3

2018-05-15 17:50:40

Bug fixed for the screen resolution issue on the long exercise menu, thanks for the pointer Dark. version 1.1 on my website, cheers.

Try my free games and software at www.rockywaters.co.uk

2018-05-17 07:04:16

@Rocky Waters
First of all, thanks for the program. I really enjoyed trying it out.
I have a suggestion however. Could homophones be please removed from the exercises? They get confusing when we are doing the exercises without letter feedback. For example, when we here "stairs," we don't know if it's s-t-a-i-r-s, or s-t-a-r-e-s. Similarly, when we here "straight", we know that it's probably "s-t-r-a-i-g-h-t," but it could also be "s-t-r-a-i-t." Though chances for that are low.

2018-05-17 11:31:14

Good point SilverEagle, I will try to eliminate those in the next release.  In the meantime there is a word repeat and spell and a phrase repeat function written in on the F3 and F4 keys.  Some of those homophones can be guessed from the context for example in the g and h exercises you will very likely get words such as eight, weight, and straight.  There is also one other feature of my program, you can add your own typing exercises, few folks will want to do this, but it really is that flexible.

Try my free games and software at www.rockywaters.co.uk