Problem solved, kernel was not responsible for speaker-test and espeakup failures. As near as I can figure it, my /etc/asound.conf file got corrupted somehow and that was enough to temporarily break the system. After having used the rescue disk and having selected my preferred speaker set and having copied the generated asound.conf file into the arch-chroot mounted system speaker-test and the screen reader now works. This time it's fenrir being used since it's time I did the learning curve on that screen reader anyway. --
