Re: How can the XO be made accessible to blind
Mitch Bradley wrote: David W Hogg wrote: On a somewhat related note, is there any way to attach an external monitor to the XO? I would love to give my astronomy research seminars in the spring from my G1G1 XO; but this would also be useful for those with impaired sight (some of my colleagues need to immensely magnify images, diagrams, and figures in order to see them). From my XO, Hogg Three solutions: [snipped] Specific instructions for the three (actually four) solutions are at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Remote_display Sameer -- Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Information Systems San Francisco State University San Francisco CA 94132 USA http://verma.sfsu.edu/ http://opensource.sfsu.edu/ ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: How can the XO be made accessible to blind
Hi, We have been working on a simple screen reader for the XO and have made some headway. We have ported and customized eSpeak for the XO. A text to speech server has been written and methods exposed through Dbus . I have documented the work done till now at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Screen_Reader. The DBUS api may be changed in the future. However, we still need to do some extensive testing and refine the structure of the speech server. We had initially planned to provide a simple highlight and speak option for the xo. We now think that we should scale up and structure the project to use eSpeak in a much more effective manner to provide accessibility to blind/low vision students. I think it would be brilliant if activity developers could exploit the underlying speech server to write accessible activities. For example, an activity at present can connect to the speech service through dbus and send it strings of text to be spoken. We hope to prepare some guidelines for activity developers to write accessible activities that could use the speech server. What would be best way to do this? We are also planning to explore Orca. We dont want to rush into development now, and would like to take some time in properly planning our approach and creating some design documents first. It'll be nice if experts could share their ideas and provide us with some direction for this project. Thank you and wishing you all a very Happy New Year. Warm regards, Hemant Goyal Message: 1 Date: Fri, 28 Dec 2007 15:57:38 + From: Gabey8 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [laptop-accessibility] How can the XO be made accessible to blind users? To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] I have some deaf-blind friends who use braille attachments to access their computers. What needs to be done in order to permit the XO to work with a braille terminal or notetaker? What screen reading programs are available for Linux? And if said screen reading programs don't like working with Sugar (yet, anyway), is setting the XO up to boot to the terminal screen and going with text-only a viable solution for braille users? Donna Donna -- purple outline with orange fill color. If you see me in the Neighborhood, say hi! :) ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: How can the XO be made accessible to blind
On a somewhat related note, is there any way to attach an external monitor to the XO? I would love to give my astronomy research seminars in the spring from my G1G1 XO; but this would also be useful for those with impaired sight (some of my colleagues need to immensely magnify images, diagrams, and figures in order to see them). From my XO, Hogg On Dec 30, 2007 12:52 PM, Hemant Goyal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, We have been working on a simple screen reader for the XO and have made some headway. We have ported and customized eSpeak for the XO. A text to speech server has been written and methods exposed through Dbus . I have documented the work done till now at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Screen_Reader. The DBUS api may be changed in the future. However, we still need to do some extensive testing and refine the structure of the speech server. We had initially planned to provide a simple highlight and speak option for the xo. We now think that we should scale up and structure the project to use eSpeak in a much more effective manner to provide accessibility to blind/low vision students. I think it would be brilliant if activity developers could exploit the underlying speech server to write accessible activities. For example, an activity at present can connect to the speech service through dbus and send it strings of text to be spoken. We hope to prepare some guidelines for activity developers to write accessible activities that could use the speech server. What would be best way to do this? We are also planning to explore Orca. We dont want to rush into development now, and would like to take some time in properly planning our approach and creating some design documents first. It'll be nice if experts could share their ideas and provide us with some direction for this project. Thank you and wishing you all a very Happy New Year. Warm regards, Hemant Goyal Message: 1 Date: Fri, 28 Dec 2007 15:57:38 + From: Gabey8 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [laptop-accessibility] How can the XO be made accessible to blind users? To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] I have some deaf-blind friends who use braille attachments to access their computers. What needs to be done in order to permit the XO to work with a braille terminal or notetaker? What screen reading programs are available for Linux? And if said screen reading programs don't like working with Sugar (yet, anyway), is setting the XO up to boot to the terminal screen and going with text-only a viable solution for braille users? Donna Donna -- purple outline with orange fill color. If you see me in the Neighborhood, say hi! :) ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel -- David W. Hogg - associate professor, NYU - http://cosmo.nyu.edu/hogg/ ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: How can the XO be made accessible to blind
David W Hogg wrote: On a somewhat related note, is there any way to attach an external monitor to the XO? I would love to give my astronomy research seminars in the spring from my G1G1 XO; but this would also be useful for those with impaired sight (some of my colleagues need to immensely magnify images, diagrams, and figures in order to see them). From my XO, Hogg Three solutions: a) Display the XO's graphics on another computer using X or VNC. b) Purchase a USB graphics adapter. (Google for USB graphics adapter to find some). It is reported that Linux drivers are available for some of them, but as far as I know, nobody has tested one on an XO. c) Dismantle the XO, install a suitable VGA connector at CN12 at the top left of the board (looking from the back), and cut a hole in the plastic to make room for the VGA cable to get out. A modification to the X configuration file will then enable VGA output. (Yes, it would be nice if this feature were easier to access, but providing such a connector as a standard feature would have increased the cost for our target market of developing world children, and compromised the industrial design and water resistance.) On Dec 30, 2007 12:52 PM, Hemant Goyal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, We have been working on a simple screen reader for the XO and have made some headway. We have ported and customized eSpeak for the XO. A text to speech server has been written and methods exposed through Dbus . I have documented the work done till now at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Screen_Reader. The DBUS api may be changed in the future. However, we still need to do some extensive testing and refine the structure of the speech server. We had initially planned to provide a simple highlight and speak option for the xo. We now think that we should scale up and structure the project to use eSpeak in a much more effective manner to provide accessibility to blind/low vision students. I think it would be brilliant if activity developers could exploit the underlying speech server to write accessible activities. For example, an activity at present can connect to the speech service through dbus and send it strings of text to be spoken. We hope to prepare some guidelines for activity developers to write accessible activities that could use the speech server. What would be best way to do this? We are also planning to explore Orca. We dont want to rush into development now, and would like to take some time in properly planning our approach and creating some design documents first. It'll be nice if experts could share their ideas and provide us with some direction for this project. Thank you and wishing you all a very Happy New Year. Warm regards, Hemant Goyal Message: 1 Date: Fri, 28 Dec 2007 15:57:38 + From: Gabey8 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [laptop-accessibility] How can the XO be made accessible to blind users? To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] I have some deaf-blind friends who use braille attachments to access their computers. What needs to be done in order to permit the XO to work with a braille terminal or notetaker? What screen reading programs are available for Linux? And if said screen reading programs don't like working with Sugar (yet, anyway), is setting the XO up to boot to the terminal screen and going with text-only a viable solution for braille users? Donna Donna -- purple outline with orange fill color. If you see me in the Neighborhood, say hi! :) ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: How can the XO be made accessible to blind
Espeak works fine, the XO just did not have the correct sound system config installed because somebody forgot to enable OSS emulation in ALSA. I hope you did not waste a lot of time editing the code for Espeak to get around this bug, I hope you did not edit it to make it pipe out sound data to be plaved via another utility, as espeak does all that by itself much faster, direct to the sound card without pipes, once the OSS sound system it requires is fully emulated in ALSA and it can use the required /dev/dsp and related file devices that it requires. I actualy files some bugs on this; Look for keyword 'espeak'. - Duane King On Sunday 30 December 2007 09:52:16 am Hemant Goyal wrote: Hi, We have been working on a simple screen reader for the XO and have made some headway. We have ported and customized eSpeak for the XO. A text to speech server has been written and methods exposed through Dbus . I have documented the work done till now at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Screen_Reader. The DBUS api may be changed in the future. However, we still need to do some extensive testing and refine the structure of the speech server. We had initially planned to provide a simple highlight and speak option for the xo. We now think that we should scale up and structure the project to use eSpeak in a much more effective manner to provide accessibility to blind/low vision students. I think it would be brilliant if activity developers could exploit the underlying speech server to write accessible activities. For example, an activity at present can connect to the speech service through dbus and send it strings of text to be spoken. We hope to prepare some guidelines for activity developers to write accessible activities that could use the speech server. What would be best way to do this? We are also planning to explore Orca. We dont want to rush into development now, and would like to take some time in properly planning our approach and creating some design documents first. It'll be nice if experts could share their ideas and provide us with some direction for this project. Thank you and wishing you all a very Happy New Year. Warm regards, Hemant Goyal Message: 1 Date: Fri, 28 Dec 2007 15:57:38 + From: Gabey8 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [laptop-accessibility] How can the XO be made accessible to blind users? To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] I have some deaf-blind friends who use braille attachments to access their computers. What needs to be done in order to permit the XO to work with a braille terminal or notetaker? What screen reading programs are available for Linux? And if said screen reading programs don't like working with Sugar (yet, anyway), is setting the XO up to boot to the terminal screen and going with text-only a viable solution for braille users? Donna Donna -- purple outline with orange fill color. If you see me in the Neighborhood, say hi! :) ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
