Editing Screen reader (section)

== History ==
Around 1978, Al Overby of IBM Raleigh developed a prototype of a talking terminal, known as SAID (for Synthetic Audio Interface Driver), for the [[IBM 3270|IBM 3270 terminal]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Cooke |first=Annemarie |date=March 2004 |title=A History of Accessibility at IBM |url=https://www.afb.org/aw/5/2/14760 |website=The American Foundation for the Blind (AFB)}}</ref> SAID read the ASCII values of the display in a stream and spoke them through a large vocal track synthesizer the size of a suitcase, and it cost around $10,000.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web |date=2009 |title=Making A Difference Award (2009) — Jim Thatcher (interview) |url=https://www.sigcas.org/2018/02/08/making-a-difference-award-2009-jim-thatcher-interview/ |website=SIGCAS, the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group for Computers and Society}}</ref> Dr. Jesse Wright, a blind research mathematician, and [[James W. Thatcher|Jim Thatcher]], formerly his graduate student from the University of Michigan, working as mathematicians for IBM, adapted this as an internal IBM tool for use by blind people. After the early [[IBM Personal Computer|IBM Personal Computer (PC)]] was released in 1981, Thatcher and Wright developed a software equivalent to SAID, called PC-SAID, or ''Personal Computer Synthetic Audio Interface Driver''. This was renamed and released in 1984 as IBM Screen Reader, which became the [[Generic trademark|proprietary eponym]] for that general class of assistive technology.<ref name=":0" />