Debian is an excellent choice, but there are also many blind users of other distros like Fedora, Slack, Gentoo, etc., etc. If you're contemplating a synthetic speech based interface, your most readily achievable results will be with a Speakup enabled kernel driving a hardware speech synth. Software speech is available for Speakup as it is for Emacspeak. However, you seem to have already discovered for yourself that their are caviats to getting software speech working. The stable, robust environment is the Linux console (including via screen). The gui is not advisable at this time or the near term future. The stable robust interfaces are either speech or braille based--or both together. Some more links for you: http://www.linux-speakup.org http://dave.mielke.cc/brltty/ PS: If your friend is interested in an accessible installation, please read my HOWTO (regardlessof the distro you ultimately choose): http://www.linux-speakup.org/ftp/disks/fedora/HOWTO_INSTALL.html Larissa Naber writes: > Hi! > > My friend Yasemin, who is blind, wants to give Linux a spin. Now I'm > looking for a suiteable distro. Although I have plenty of Linux > experience my knowledge concerning making linux work for ablind person > is somewhat limited. As of now, I spectaculariy failed to make my > emacspeak speak. Most of my own maschines are running either gentoo or > slackware and I used Suse in the past. > > I believe that a distro with a bsd like port system such as debian or > gentoo is easiest to handle for a newbie. As gentoo tends to be a bit > volatile, I probably would rather pick a debian stable release. Anybody > out there using debian? > > We allready tried a Suse (which refused to recognize the braille > terminal, a baum vario 40) and a oralux (which just would not talk on > her machine - I guess I'll have to put in a different sound card, > probably some windows only onboard chip) > > It is not necessary that she'll be able to install the maschine all by > herlf (at least not yet). > > Please let me know what you are using, and why you are using it. > > Greetings > > Larissa > > _______________________________________________ > > Blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list -- Janina Sajka Phone: +1.202.494.7040 Partner, Capital Accessibility LLC http://www.CapitalAccessibility.Com Bringing the Owasys 22C screenless cell phone to the U.S. and Canada. Go to http://www.ScreenlessPhone.Com to learn more. Chair, Accessibility Workgroup Free Standards Group (FSG) janina@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://a11y.org _______________________________________________ Blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list