All of this criticicism of Speakup, however valid, avoids the fact that
Speakup has nonetheless been available as a staging module with Debian,
for example, as well as Arch, if I'm not mistaken. It is not available
with Fedora. It then became unavailable even from rpmfusion, and I've
not heard that it has returned. I take this to mean that Fedora has
been less interested than other distros in acessibility in a very basic
Linux thing, the text console.
I also find it a lot harder to get at Fedora documentation than I do
getting Debian or Arch documentation. I follow the document link and
can't find actual documents. I tried on Sunday. I think I had to use
Google to find some, which is bizarre. I couldn't even get to them
using the key for simulating mouseclicks! I assume you can get to them
somehow from there, but I haven't found it and I suspect it's an
accessibility matter. There much easier to find from the Debian or Arch
homepage, and maybe from the homepages of other distros as well. (I
haven't looked lately.)
Third, although this may be a weaker point, minimalizing the text
installer is another blow to accessibility. I know blind folks have
used the graphical one, but at least some of them found it troublesome.
Now, there are things I like about Fedora. Although I technically
started with Debian, but I pretty much started with the speakup-modified
version of Fedora 4. I used it a lot, along with GRML and a couple of
others. I like rmp and yum/dnf. I'd be a mighty grateful and happy
camper if Fedora became fully accessible, and might jump from whatever
distro I use at that time to give it a shot. But I don't think the
complaints about speakup justify its absence there, or that
accessibility is high enough on its priority list.
Best.
Al
On 04/24/2017 08:15 PM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:
The serial terminal is indeed built into the kernel, but the difference
is that it isn't stuck in staging with no hope of ever getting out into
the main tree. In fact, the serial terminal has been a part of the base
kernel for many many years. And what in the world is wrong with using a
cable to connect to something inexpensive instead of purchasing an
obsolete piece of hardware that costs way more than it's worth,
especially if it's possible to purchase a fully functional computer for
a much lower price?
OK, Speakup is now once again in active development, and there have been
a ton of messages to the Speakup list during the month of April of this
year, and a few more in March as I recall. But my point is that if Red
Hat's work toward the accessibility of its installer is "too little too
late" as one person mentioned here, about 7 patches under review in
Speakup over the course of 30 to 45 days is also too little too late, by
far, as Speakup has had far longer to get it right and to position
itself as the only screen reader to ever make it into any mainline
kernel on any operating system, and it has thus far failed miserably.
Sorry, I'll just stick with my $15 uart to USB cable and my $15 single
board computer, as I can't be bothered to try to find a working hardware
speech synthesizer and the correct port to plug it into while I wait for
Speakup to get proper USB support and to be available on any kernel no
matter who is distributing it.
~Kyle
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