Yes, I see what you mean. There are possibilities, but unfortunately
I'm not a programmer and so couldn't contribute much other than some
ideas. Maybe I'll learn enough at some point do act on some of my ideas.
Scott
On Mar 21, 2006, at 7:21 PM, Travis Siegel wrote:
Scott, now that you mention it, it shouldn't be impossible to port
yasr (Yet Another Screen Reader) to the mac. It runs in user
space, already works on bsd, linux, and others. With that, making
it run on the mac shouldn't be too terribly difficult, though it
only supports hardware synths, so a usb/serial adapter would be
necessary. Perhaps it could be used to drive a braille display as
well, though as far as I know, it's not been used for that in the
past. No reason it couldn't be modified though.
Something to consider.
On Mar 21, 2006, at 6:34 PM, Scott Howell wrote:
Best of my knowledge is that Speakup is still at http://linux-
speakup.org and the documentation is current accept perhaps
referring to the latest distros that have Speakup enabled
installs. There are modified Redhat packages still around.
Now to tie this back to the Mac, what would be very cool is if
there was a means to build Speakup as a set of modules that could
be loaded at boot on the Mac. I don't think it would be impossible
given that Darwin is the underlying os. Now whether it be Speakup
or VO, I think its possible to have a speaking box from boot to
shutdown if someone wanted this and I'm surprised no one has
brought this up as a topic. Sure would help with the Terminal
issue. Of course we'd have to have software speech or get the
hardware synth working, but well its just a thought and something
to add to the mix.
I love mixing it up.grin
Scott
On Mar 20, 2006, at 8:44 PM, Kafka's Daytime wrote:
Perhaps the salient point of the Newsforge article (and I try,
successfully I hope, to tie this back into a reasonably on-topic
point at the end of this post) is that it's very difficult to
find documentation and get help for FOSS in general. Case in
point, original speakup links seem to be dead. There are
tutorials scattered around but most seem out of date or, at the
very least, confusing. All Will Thoms wanted was a list of
resources for Linux access. We seem to agree that those resources
are around...but where are they? It's hard to imagine an average
user (and not a power-user like Cheryl or Travis) understanding
the blinux faq: http://leb.net/blinux/blinux-faq.html and moving
easily from there to unassisted installation. A quick Google
search doesn't produce any obvious answers that I can see (and
the same goes for information on installing Windows without
sighted assistance). Where's the independence? When posting the
article link originally, I thought it might be valuable to draw a
contrast between the realities of blind access for FOSS vs. Mac
OS X. The Mac OS X integrated, single-bellybutton, turnkey
approach (without significant additional costs e.g. expensive
screen readers on Windows or expensive hardware synthesizers on
Linux) seems to be quickly proving itself more practical, broad-
accessbility and independence-promoting vs. the current FOSS
state-of-affairs with scattered, often badly-documented resources
maintained with varying degrees of frequency/efficiency or the
high cost of access on Windows. I'm not suggesting that everybody
should use a Mac...but I am suggesting that folks developing for
the other platforms (as well as educators and legislators) would
do well to take a closer look at what Apple has done. Reasonable
cost and independence-for-the-average-user should be the central
themes of any arguments promoting the Mac as a platform for use
by the blind (and arguments for improving the state-of-affairs on
the other popular computing platforms).
This article on 'Open Source for the Visually Impaired'
originally posted in 2000 - makes some relevant arguments:
http://linux.omnipotent.net/article.php?article_id=10059
There seems to be nothing at the link for the "Ocularis" Linux
distribution mentioned in the above article.
http://ocularis.sourceforge.net/
Joe
On Mar 20, 2006, at 3:09 PM, Cheryl Homiak wrote:
Hmm, interesting. Both linux and Macosx can be installed without
sighted assistance. I'm assuming his issue with linux has to do
with Italian, though I'm not quite sure why that would hinder
whatever braille system he's using from being detected. I even
heard on another list that if a certain file is put together--
don't remember the details--one can also install Windows
independently.
--
Cheryl
"Where your treasure is,
there will your heart be also".
