> Unfortunately it is impossible to connect the legacy free > lap top with the legacy full Braille note. I don't know if a USB-to-serial-port dongle (should be able to find them for under $20 US) will do the trick. It might not let you catch things from bootup, but once the USB drivers load, you might be able to use that. Unfortunatly, you'd then be lugging around an Insprion, a Braille-note, and a dongle. Gonna need your own pet camel or pack-horse if it gets any worse (grins) > I was hoping to find a software application similar to eliquence > for windows. One that needs no external synthasizer. Is anyone > familiar with software of this nature? There are several projects that you can look into--while there's been work to get speakup working without a hardware synth, it's still in the nacent stages and seems to involve a long number of steps that rebuild your kernel and other goodies. There are at least two other projects though of which I've heard: Yasr: (yet another screen reader) found at http://yasr.sourceforge.net/ Screader: www.euronet.nl/~acj/eng-screader.html Both of which are supposed to work with the software synths available. With these two, you do forfeit speakup's kernel integration, allowing you to have speech from bootup, but they should work with all your favorite console apps. Additionally, for the GUI, there's the gnopernicus project http://www.baum.ro/gnopernicus.html which brings accessibility to the X environment. It's my aim to try out at least Yasr and Screader shortly, but I've just lacked the time to monkey with them. I don't know how far along Gnopernicus is, but my understanding is that it's coming along with time. You'll need a software synth (like MBROLA, Festival, Flite, or IBM's ViaVoice) to actually do the TTS for these products, but at least the first three are freely available. I've heard conflicting bits on ViaVoice, so you'd have to investigate that one further. Hope this helps, -tim _______________________________________________ Blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list