Eyes-Free Home: The Marvin Shell

The Marvin shell pulls together available eyes-free applications to provide an integrated user experience. Note that talking applications can come from many sources, with project Eyes-Free being but one such source. For other exciting talking applications that use our open Text To Speech (TTS) APIs, see the Android Marketplace, where you will find many useful tools that integrate seamlessly with Marvin.

when you install the Eyes-Free Shell, you can choose to make Marvin your default home screen — this means that pressing the home button always brings up the Marvin shell. To return to the default Android home screen, hold down the back button for 3 seconds or more. Here is a brief description of the Marvin user interface.
1.1 Single Touch Access To Useful Tools

The Marvin shell uses the Stroke Dialer to provide single touch access to useful tools right from the home screen. You can explore this interface by moving your finger around the screen — as you move over the buttons, Marvin speaks the associated action. Lifting up the finger executes the current action. As an example, the top row of the keypad, i.e., 1, 2, and 3 provide status information. Stroking to 4 brings up your favorite short-cuts, and 6 speaks your current location using geo-location information obtained from Google Maps. Pressing 7 connects to your voice-mailbox, and pressing 9 puts the phone in airplane mode — this disables all wireless connections, and helpfully shows a large airplane on the screen to satisfy your friendly airline crew when flying. Finally, the applications that appear on the shortcuts screen can be customized by editing XML file

/sdcard/eyesfree/shortcuts.xml

on your SD-Card — as is apparent, this is a power-user feature:-)!

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• eyes-free
• android
• marvin
• shell
• home
• tv raman
• charles l chen

[mduchevsky]

@fogluver

Search for "iAugComm" and "Speaking Pad" on Android Market.

iAugComm is an icon based augcomm app much like you described. Speaking Pad lets you type any text and then it reads it out for you.

Both have been very helpful to me. I have a serious speech impairment, but thankfully am otherwise fine.

I use iAugComm for quick communication with simple phrases. That works most of the time. When I have to say something complex, I switch to Speaking Pad. I have been VERY happyw ith my G1.

[heyarnoldce]

you seem to be spamming, so i'll take the liberty of copy/pasting my response.

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oh, and i suppose one of those advantages is that it runs on an iPhone, as opposed to an android device. No one watching this video cares about software being written for a phone they dont have.

[babydollwtch]

Thank you so very much for this video. I am in such need of help after making this jump to the touch screen phone as a visually impaired person. I am at this time using the vlog to use the phone and I have talk back enabled and downloaded but they do not interface very well. I am trying to work through and make this work for me and for us all.

[shameelshami]

your a fucking mallu right change your fucking accent

[mukaissi]

Hi

Did you checked "A Special Phone" app for iPhone. It don't need voice recognition and you don't have to dial, the only thing you need to do is shake!!

[mukaissi]

Hi

I'm the developer of "A Special Phone". An iPhone application intended to help people with special disabilities to make phone calls using the iPhone.

The application was released Friday, april the 3rd at 1am and it's available for download at the app store.

The word must know that an iPhone app also exists for people with special needs and it has several advantages over Google "Eyes-Free" :)

I will post a youtube video soon showing my iPhone app in action.

[KeLopezCL]

When reading the location, Marvin uses eSpeak ;)

[fogluver]

I see future use of this as an inexpensive alternative/augmentative communication device for non-verbal communicators who have developmental or neurogenic communication problems. Will icons be introduced at some point, rather than words, for those who are unable to read? I am a Speech-Language Pathologist.

[PhilTeare]

Hi guys. Nice work!