Speaking Teacher

Nowadays, if you want to learn a foreign language, you can take advantage of an extensive array of online resources, as well as specialized applications. However, users with various disabilities often have a hard time finding software created with them in mind.

Speaking Teacher is a relatively straightforward program designed to help you learn foreign languages and improve your English vocabulary. The application’s most notable feature, however, is the fact that it is also accessible to blind users.

Speaking Teacher was originally created to help users who wish to learn English, but several tests are provided for other languages as well, including German, Polish, French and Russian.

These tests require you to answer a question with a single word, translate various terms or listen to a word and spell it correctly. However, the questions are not very well formulated, and they often have multiple possible answers, although only one is deemed correct.

The application offers two distinct operating modes, and you can switch between them at launch or by accessing the Options menu.

When the Blind accessibility mode is activated, mouse input is disabled, and the program can be controlled solely with the help of the keyboard. Moreover, menu names, questions and answers are spoken aloud with the help of a selected speech engine.

While this might not be a major issue for many users, the application’s UI needs some significant improvements. The layout is not particularly intuitive, and, on the whole, the interface is very outdated.

Not only that, but the application is sometimes slow to respond to commands, which can make it quite frustrating to use.

In conclusion, Speaking Teacher could stand to be improved in many respects, as the user interface is far from impressive, and the questions need some refinement. Nevertheless, we can only appreciate the fact that it is fully accessible to blind users, and these issues will hopefully be addressed in the future.