Portable Assistive Technology Application Overview

1. CLiCk, Speak:
   An open source, freely available extension for the Firefox web browser. It is part of the CLC-4-TTS Suite of products, it features a mouse driven interface, and it reads web pages - hence its name. CLiCk, Speak is designed for sighted users who want text-to-speech functionality. It doesn't identify elements or announce events - two features that are very important for visually impaired users but very annoying for sighted users. It also has a simplified, mouse driven interface that is designed to be easy for users familiar with point-and-click graphical user interfaces. CLiCk, Speak works on Windows, Macintosh, and Linux.

2. Fire Vox:
   Fire Vox is an open source, freely available talking browser extension for the Firefox web browser. Think of it as a screen reader that is designed especially for Firefox. In addition to the basic features that are expected of screen readers, such as being able to identify headings, links, images, etc. and providing navigational assistance, Fire Vox provides support for MathML and CSS speech module properties. It also works on Windows, Macintosh, and Linux.

3. CLC STAR:
   Allows users to easily setup preferences for how they want pages presented to them in Firefox.

4. iZoom:
   iZoom Web is the only screen magnifier which runs directly from a website while having a minimal impact on the operating system. 

5. LetMeType:
   LetMeType is a word-prediction program that helps you enter text. Running in the background, it analyses what you type. After some time it has collected enough information to guess a word after you have typed the first two or three letters. A list of the most probable words is displayed, and you can select one with a single keystroke or just continue typing.

6. Non Visual Desktop Reader (NVDA):
   A screen reader is a program that speaks what is happening on the computer to the user. People who have low vision or are totally blind use screen readers. People who may have problems reading may also at times use screen readers. There are many screen readers available; this text is going to cover one screen reader called NVDA.  NVDA stands for “Non visual desktop access”. Everything that you are going to do on the computer will be told to you with synthesized speech. Synthesized speech is an artificial computerized voice. You will be doing everything only by using the computer keyboard.

7. Nextalk:
   NexTalk is a network based system with special provisions for the communication needs of the deaf and hard of hearing, but with advanced communications and messaging features. It is a blending of telephone and computer technologies which links TTY callers with every NexTalk personal computer user on the local and wide area networks. With NexTalk, any TTY call can be answered and then transferred to another NexTalk user or group of users (department).

8. Balabolka:
   Balabolka is a Text-To-Speech (TTS) program. All computer voices installed on your system are available to Balabolka. The on-screen text can be saved as a WAV or MP3 file. The program can read the clipboard content, view the text from DOC, RTF, PDF, FB2 and HTML files, customize font and background colour, control reading from the system tray or by the global hotkeys. Balabolka uses various versions of Microsoft Speech API (SAPI); it allows to alter a voice's parameters, including rate and pitch. The user can apply a special substitution list to improve the quality of the voice's articulation. This feature is useful when you want to change the spelling of words. The rules for the pronunciation correction use the syntax of VBScript.