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Published on December 4, 2007

Despite living in a dark world, they will be able to get in touch with computers and use them to improve their careers.

To offer these people a better chance, Standard Chartered Bank (Thai) has worked with the Department of Computer Engineering at Chulalongkorn University to set up a project called iSight Lab to develop the first ever Thai screen-reader software based on open-source technology to allow the blind to use the application for free.

A screen reader is software to allow the visually impaired to operate computer systems just by listening. As the software comes with a text-to-speech and speech synthesiser, it reads text on a computer screen and repeats it out loud in a human voice. This allows the blind to navigate computer systems.

In the past, only a few of Thai blind people had a chance to use this type of software as the licence is very expensive at around Bt50,000. This is a serious limitation for most blind people.

To eliminate this problem, the project team decided to use open-source screen-reader software and add more features with support for Thai language. This opens more chances for blind people as there is no concern about the huge cost of licensed screen-reader software.

The bank's head of technology and operations Jan Verplancke said the bank would provide Bt3 million in funding support during 2007 to 2010 to the university to develop the licence-free screen-reader software.

The project is a part of the bank's worldwide Seeing is Believing scheme to offer assistance through its US$10 million (Bt320 million) budget to help 10 million blind people in 20 countries have a better life by the end of 2010.

A research team at the Computer Engineering Department will take care of the entire development. A researcher, Atiwong Suchato, said the team would adopt the one-year-old open-source screen-reader software called Non Visual Desktop Access (NVDA), as a basis for further development of Thai-based screen-reader software.

NVDA was created in 2006 by a blind programmer Michael Curran in Australia out of frustration with the non-existence of a free open-source screen-reader for Windows. He believed that accessibility should not be an extra cost, and people with impaired vision should be able to use any type of technology for the same cost as sighted people.

To make the software support Thai, Atiwong said the team would develop text-to-speech technology to allow the software to read and speak out in Thai language.

This, he said, was a key element to make the screen-reader software best suit blind Thai people.

There are two key components in the text-to-speech technology. The first is related to Thai text analysis, a mechanism to allow the software to analyse Thai messages or sentences correctly, while the second is the development of a speech synthesiser, a system to convert text into sound.

Atiwong said the screen reader was just a base for people with visual impairment to use computers. To offer more chances to these people to develop careers, the project would make the Thai-based screen-reader software support call-centre applications.

"Under the agreement, we plan to apply the software for business use in the call centre of Standard Chartered Bank so we have to integrate the software with the bank's call-centre system," Atiwong said.

In the first phase, apart from a study on NVDA, the team also has to study the bank's call-centre so they can design the software's interface to work with the bank's system.

"We have to make the screen reader smarter, to read and respond to business applications, especially in the bank's call centre.

"We believe this will open a new chance for blind people to get a new career," he said.

The team will complete a prototype of Thai-based open-source screen-reader software for the call centre next year and it will begin a pilot test at Standard Chartered Bank (Thai).

The bank's senior executive vice president for corporate affairs, Pratamaporn Svasti-Xuto, said the bank planned to hire more blind people to work at the bank's call centre and this tool was necessary to help the bank with the plan.

After getting the first prototype, the team in the second year will make further developments, especially with the software's usability, and it also hopes that eventually the software will be developed to support mobile devices including mobile phones and personal digital assistants.

The project also receives assistance from the Thailand Association for the Blind as the project's adviser to develop software to meet users' requirements.

As the software is based on open source, all new developments for added features and interfaces will also be open to the open-source community for further development.

After the software is ready for practical use, the bank also plans to donate the software together with computer systems to blind schools across the country.

Pongpen Sutharoj

 The Nation