My biggest problem with Fedora is the lack of packages. Coming from Arch,
and the AUR, I'm used to having *all* of the Audacious plugins, including
crystalizer and such, but Fedora only came with a few of them. Also, for
packages like Emacspeak, you have to build the dependencies, DND builddep,
for Emacspeak to even install, which I don't understand why. builddep
wasn't needed on other packages, but it is with Emacspeak. Also, Boxing
does not work with Fedora, and eSpeak-ng is... broken or only pulls down
espeak or something. So, as I've said in IRC, I really recommend either
Debian or Arch to work with. Arch, already having Fenrir, OcrDesktop,
Emacspeak-git, Boxing support, all that, would be a fine place to start. I
know, Fedora is that middle ground between cutting-edge and yearly update
cycles, but really, it all depends on how much work we, the community, want
to do. Getting Boxing working may even be impossible on Fedora, I don't
know, but that would put any Emacspeak user off right then, or any user who
is impatient for eSpeak to gain a *lot* more privity and a more natural way
of speaking, *not* a natural voice. But, there are always other distros we
can base ourselves off of, Fedora isn't the only alternative. I just think
Arch would be a far better way to go, it's definitely be easier to start. I
know Orca is developed on Fedora, and that might add a perceived wow
factor, or a closeness with the developer, but again, Arch has the orca-git
aur package, and their is, as some one said earlier, only one developer
working on Orca.
The first big problem with Fedora is Braille. Brltty comes with the use of
the API commented, so that new users will have to know how to work with
config files, and how to uncomment things, just to get Braille with Orca.
As a Braille display user myself, it was pretty disheartening.
Then, when I did get Braille working, I found that reading with it wasn't
so fun after all. If I didn't press a key for a while, a key on the
keyboard of the laptop that is, the screen would lock, and my reading
material would be replaced by the lock screen. So now, I have my books and
such on the display for reading in the word processor.
A more serious issue with the Braille display is copying things to it. The
Various Ultra has internal storage. When I want to copy something directly
to it, it says that it cannot. But there's a side-effect, everything on the
storage media is deleted for some reason. So, I'll have to just use a flash
drive as an intermediary between them. Yes, Linux has that effect on people
after a while, you learn to just accept the flaws and deal with it, as you
had to with Windows, because there's so little support, so little time, so
little care. Especially with Braille, those who don't use it don't seem to
care much, and those who use it can't do much to change things. At least, I
can't, as I don't know a programming language.
Now for the most serious problem, Orca, for me, doesn't talk at the log in
screen. It may just be from me uninstalling and reinstalling Orca and
eSpeak so many times, and I may install another distro because of all this
Discord, all these problems, but for now, I have to listen for the little
pops of Pulse audio/alsa doing their thing to know when to press enter,
type my password, press enter again. But I didn't wipe Windows from my
machine just to run back to it, I will soldier on through this bleak
landscape, because I see so much potential if we manage to do all this.
Linux has the ability to grow, to get better, by our direct actions, not
just emailing accessibility@xxxxxxxxx and hoping that, besides the
automated response, something will happen. I am, though, a rather sindical
person. I don't expect Orca to have amazing Braille support, with
formatting information shown by way of Liblouis, Audacious plugins being
all there, Boxing working or Emacspeak folks waking up to the possibility
that if they focused a little on helping with eSpeak, it may progress more
than just bandaging bad pronunciación a. I'm not saying this or that
project isn't getting anywhere, sure it is, but we need more help than what
we have, a sighted Orca developer who knows not much about Braille, and a
community of devs who probably don't even know we're considering their
distro to be a base for ours. But, I'll sit back and wait and see what
comes of all this, helping out where I can with documentation or user
support, all that. I'm training to be an ATI, assistive technology
instructor, so if y'all want what I can offer, as I've said in IRC where
sometimes my voice is drown out by noise, then I'm here.
On March 16, 2017 6:37:05 PM Joel Roth <joelz@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Eric Oyen wrote:
...we, as a community, don't have an actual unified distro
to call our own. Sure, Vinux is a decent distro, but it's
lacking a lot of useful features outside of accessibility.
I, myself, use Ubuntu primarily because of the larger
software repository. I have also had to help out my room
mate (who is definitely a Linux NewB) and Ubuntu was the
easiest to use.
Hi Eric,
I'm not sure how things are at present, but in the past,
Debian has shown some commitment to supporting
accessibility[1], including at the installer level[2].
This is not the same as a special-purpose distribution, and
I think the pages were written some time ago. Still I would
think that some effort would be worthwhile, and would
benefit all Debian derivatives, which could include
a accessbility-centric distribution.
1. https://wiki.debian.org/accessibility
2. https://wiki.debian.org/accessibility#Debian_installer_accessibility
Regards,
Joel
--
Joel Roth
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