What do you mean by the statement "... also need perhaps more third
party access software if ubuntu won't incorporate one in their system?"
Orca is included with Ubuntu and Speakup is built into the kernel used
by Ubuntu. Are you referring to the Ubuntu Phone or the Voxin text to
speech engine? Ubuntu and the Mac OS's are the only two OS's I know
about where a blind person can install the OS with no sighted assistance.
I agree with the statement below that Canonical isn't responsible for
Orca, but I think Canonical has more to do with Orca than MS has with
NVDA, JAWS, Window Eyes and so on. I know MS has contributed to NVDA and
provides technical information to the screen reader vendors, but
Canonical does have an employee contributing to Orca and Orca is
included in the Ubuntu desktop OS.
On 01/06/2013 04:14 AM, Aidan Maher wrote:
Thank you for this, Its good to no, and I agree with all said, its
just to me very unfortunet because I don't like the command line,
neither do I understand it, I have great respect for all older
computer users who noes these things better and who come out of the
dos era, as they no of a world wich young guys like me no nothing
about. But sorry for my ignoarance, but then if I may ask as I don't
no these things wel, is orca then the only screenreader available
except for speakup wich is drivvin command line? I mean shouldn't we
also need perhaps more third party access software if ubuntu won't
incorperate one in their system? I also never new that firefox didn't
work wel on mac, intresting.
On 06/01/2013, B. Henry <[email protected]> wrote:
Yes, you can have the eloquence voices on Linux systems. There are packages
built for Debian&Ubuntu, and I know that people have it working on other
distros as well, probably from the same tarballs, but don't remember for
sure.
Try googling Voxin or oralux. (I may have the spelling wrong on that last
one)
Anyway, the same ibmtts that is used by eloquence and ibmviavoice is used by
voxin. It's refferred to as ibmtts in speechdispatcher configuration files.
The voices cost $5 per language. They work with both speechdispatcher and
emacspeak speech servers. There's a special installation package that
configures your system to be able to use the voices with emacspeak that is
updated as new releases of Debian and Ubuntu come out. I have used the
Spanish voices as espeak doesn't sound good at all with Spanish.
I'm tired/not looking for urls nor writing very well right now, but write me
off list and I can hook you up with more information if you have any trouble
finding these voices.
Orca, and speakup for that matter have nothing to do with Ubuntu, or at
least no more is Ubuntu responsible for their development than is Microsoft
responsible for NVDA, Jaws or any other windows screen-reader. I will say
that Orca's only been around for about a third of the time that jaws and
window-eyes have more or less. NVDA does for sure give a better experience
in most cases than does Orca, but if you are willing to do a fair amount of
your computing on the command line I find that you can make up for some of
the shortcomings with GUI accessibility in Linux.
Any conparisons are OT for this thread anyway, and really OT for this list,
so I'll just leave it there except for saying that I think most of us are
glad to see improvements in access for any and all platforms. I certainly
want to have as many options as possible. I for one do %95 of my computing
on Linux, but I wish it were more practical for me to use Linux for that
other %5, and I wish I was more efficient for some tasks I do under Linux
that I could sometimes do faster on a windows machine.
Regards,
--
B.H.
On Sat, Jan 05, 2013 at 09:51:11PM +0200, Aidan Maher wrote:
Wel, I am stil learning this thing, but I don't see how I can get away
from windows, I mean we don't even have elliquence in linux systems,
neither half of the functions jaws can offer, but very true that
ubuntu is a great system and I agree with all said that it must be
taken much more seriously. I just think that many people should not be
blamed if they stil use windows as there are reasons for that. A
balance is always helthy.
On 05/01/2013, B. Henry <[email protected]> wrote:
Terrible! I am appauled reading that your msg was marked spam.
Sadly, your friends and you are in the majority of blind computer users
in
deciding that Windows meets their needs better than current Linux
realeases
due to the lack of major progress of a<ccessibility.i
There is no doubt that as far as web-browsing goes NVDA/firefox gives a
muuch better experience on most web-pages than does any
browser with Linux screenreading options. I'd go as far as to say that
NVDA/firefox is the gold standard for accessible web-browsing. There's
also
no doubt that web-browsers are if not the most important programs on
most
computers they are one of the most used and most indespensible pieces
of
software for the majority of users. This is close to as true for blind
users
as it is for the population in general, and I think that I'm not alone
when
I say that it is very hard to continue to be pasient waiting on an
acceptable level of web-browser accessibility. The ball is not in
Ubuntu's
court in general here, but as is said below at the very least it is
important to fast track the inclusion of latest accessibility software
in to
Ubuntu.
I think I'm correct in saying that it's a scramble to get the LTS
releases
minimally accessible when first deamed ready for production use. When
major
accessibility bugs are still not fixed when the LTS comes out of beta
this
says to me that Canical needs to dedicate more resources to making
Ubuntu
usable by blind users.
I'd like to see mid-term Ubuntu releases have a similar level of
accessibility to that now acheived with the LTSs, and resolvable
accessibility issues dealt with issues treated as critical for all
long-term-support Ubuntu releases.
Especially with a mobile Ubuntu option top line accessibility seems like
it
could even make good business sense. Apple has captured a much larger
share
of the blind-mobile-user market than they'd have if other platforms
offered
similar levels of out of the box accessibility. (I hope that latest
android
has acheived comparible accessibility to ios, but do not have devices
to
compare to know if this is the case or not.)
Anyway, it'll be an uphill battle for Ubuntu to catch up in mobile
space, so
why not try and do so everywhere possible, including with blind folk?
I'll be looking at the Shuttleworth blog post for sure, and if enough of
us
speak up who knows! I hope others find the minutes required to comment
as
well, and if we are consistently treated as spammers then we certainly
need
to take this to as broad an audience as is possible. I really hope that
this
was an odd exception and that our voices will be heard by the Ubuntu
community at large, and especially by the powers that be at Canonical.
--
Burt Henry
On Fri, Jan 04, 2013 at 10:50:33PM -0600, Nolan Darilek wrote: a
So if you wish to see Ubuntu accessibility improved, here area some
blog posts you might wish to comment on.
Here is Mark Shuttleworth's post on goals for 2013, not wishing to
leave anyone behind, and striving to be relevant to the types of
computing everyone wants to do. It's silly for a company like
Canonical to state that they don't wish to leave anyone behind in
2013 when the next guaranteed accessible release will be in 2014.
Similarly, it's silly for Canonical to want to be relevant to all
types of computing, while telling blind users and others that we
cannot have the latest At-SPI or ATK releases for our browsers. I am
a developer. I need the latest accessibility infrastructure so I can
develop accessible websites, and I struggle to do so as my browser
fails to render some sites accessibly. When I used Ubuntu 11.04, I
found that I had less access in Firefox than I do under 12.10,
possibly because I wasn't using the latest AT-SPI. I'm finding that
Windows 7 is more relevant to my needs as a blind web developer than
is Ubuntu because Firefox under NVDA is more accessible than is
Firefox under Ubuntu:
http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1221/comment-page-1#comment-400356
Unfortunately, I wrote a nice and diplomatic comment only to have
Akismet decide that my sentiments were spam. I returned to the post
a few days later to find a message to that effect, and now there is
no record of my comment at all. It's sad when you expend so much
effort on being diplomatic and respectful only for some automated
system to decide that your sentiments are spam and that they should
be removed.
Here is Jono's announcement of Ubuntu for Phones:
http://www.jonobacon.org/2013/01/02/announcing-ubuntu-for-phones/
My comment there appears to still be around, but I find that under
Ubuntu 12.10 I cannot arrow down the list of comments. Focus appears
to bounce to the top. That isn't Canonical's fault I'm certain, but
one would hope that a distribution that is changing so much about
how we use our computers could afford to hire enough of an
accessibility team to work on these types of issues.
If people want to work on this then I'm happy to help. Quite
honestly, I'm burning out on accessibility. I've used and have
developed for Android since 1.6, when the accessibility situation
there was barely tolerable, and even today I'm trying so hard to
contribute to the Android accessibility ecosystem and am being
snubbed by Google. I don't know what it is about accessibility and
open source culture that makes it so hard for people to contribute.
My girlfriend has CP, and she too wishes she could use Ubuntu but
doesn't because of accessibility issues. I'm almost to the point of
replacing my Ubuntu system with Windows just because I'm tired of
battling with these access issues. I have a lot of respect for
Canonical's small access team, but if Canonical just wishes to stick
its head in the sand again and again, to throw a bunch of resources
at shiny things while ignoring the disabled, then it will quickly
become apparent that Linux for Human Beings *really* means Linux for
Completely Able-bodied Human Beings. I understand that other
distributions may not be accessible either, but that is no excuse
for Canonical, Redhat, etc. to simply stand aside and let Linux
become less accessibly relevant than Windows. It's sad that I enjoy
using my VirtualBox Windows 7 install more than I do Ubuntu for many
tasks, and is sad when accessibility developers ask me why I don't
just abandon Linux for the far more accessible Windows.,
On 01/04/2013 09:06 PM, Robert Cole wrote:
Hello, Burt.
Your e-mail was accidentally sent to me, but not to the list. I am
forwarding your message to the list. I hope that this is alright.
Kind regards.
Take care.
On 01/04/2013 07:00 PM, B. Henry wrote:
Well, I certainly am behind, and if the opportunity presents
itself alongside of those who would like to see an effort made
to make all Ubuntu releases as accessible as is reasonably
possible. The big word is of course reasonably.
I am someone who wants things to work for me and those with
similar and other limitations when it's practical. Personally
I'm not that unhappy with using LTS releases, but enjoyed using
Maverick on several machines and I'm writing to you from the
version of Vinux based on Natty, so I'm certainly not one who'd
never use a mid-term Ubuntu version.
Perhaps if Ubuntu can gain market share and hence money from
some of the changes that are being implemented then some of that
money can be put back in to accessibility development. I can be
patient with a short term lapse in accessibility, but do
sincerely hope that this is not a strategy that is considered
good enough for the long term, and I'll certainly add my voice
to those who are calling for a more inclusive Ubuntu.
On the other hand I can't see that out of the box accessibility
is better with Fedora, or for that matter any major cutting
edge/rapid release distro. Maybe I'm wrong about this, but even
if I'm not there's no reason why just keeping a half a step
ahead of average is good enough when it comes to accessibility.
Regards, and yes special regards and thanks to Luke and others
who work with what they have to give us the accessibility that
they can.
--
Burt Henry
On 01/04/2013 01:09 AM, Robert Cole wrote:
Hello, Nolan.
When I first switched to Linux, I did so because I fell in
love with Ubuntu. Ubuntu is what I used (exclusively) until
the accessibility issues began to kick in. I am very
appreciative of the hard work which the Accessibility team
puts into Ubuntu, and I understand that they are very limited
because fo various reasons. My frustration si most certainly
not with them, but with teh company whose operating system I
fell in love with back in 2006. I still remember the
excitement I felt when I saw the Ubuntu philosophy "for human
beings".
But then, as time moved on, I had to move on as well. I really
enjoyed using Unity, and I absolutely loved all that Ubuntu
had to offer. If it was always as accessible as it once was, I
would definitely go back. I don't want to sound strange in
saying this, but I am kind of "homesick" for my first Linux
operating system. While I am enjoying my experience with
Fedora, I really miss what I had come to know in Ubuntu.
I am not sure how I can help. I had posted a comment on Mark
Shuttleworth's blog sometime in 2012, but it seemed to go
unnoticed.
I forwarded this message to the AccessibleFreedom Support
mailing list; I hope that this is alright.
In this world's eyes, I am basically a nobody, but if I can
somehow lend my voice in support of what you are standing for,
I will certainly do so. I am not online as much as I used to
be, but as I am able I will help you in making this call for
accessibility known.
Kind regards.
On 01/02/2013 03:50 PM, Nolan Darilek wrote:
I would like to organize some sort of advocacy effort to get
Canonical to take accessibility more seriously. I understand
the limitations of the current accessibility team, but if we
look back at the state of computing two years ago vs. today,
any reasonable person would agree that telling a certain
subset of the population that they can only be assured
accessible software on that schedule while others get
upgrades every six months is unreasonable. I don't want
Ubuntu to be another Android, an accessibility situation
with which I am quite familiar.
I tried posting a comment here:
http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1221/comment-page-1#comment-400356
because a post that claims that Canonical doesn't want to
leave users behind in 2013 seems at odds with a company
whose next release I will have guaranteed access to won't be
out until 2014. Unfortunately, my comment got caught up in
Akismet and appears to have vanished. Perhaps others who
feel the same should ask Mark not to leave accessibility
behind while Canonical charges ahead in so many other areas.
Ubuntu Phone uses QML 5. I get that QT isn't as accessible,
but it's being adopted by a bunch of companies in the mobile
space, so you'd think that they'd have all contributed
toward making it accessible. Perhaps it's time for Canonical
to set a good example in this space and contribute more
toward accessibility than it currently does.
I'm going to start actively commenting on Canonical and
other blogs, advocating for the expansion of the
accessibility team. Thoughts on what else we can do? I'd
love to do this stuff myself, but I'm already writing an
Android screen reader and working on Android accessibility
projects, and end users can't always be called upon to take
up the slack that paying companies leave behind.
--
Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
--
Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
--
Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
--
Christopher (CJ)
chaltain at Gmail
--
Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
