Now that I think about it, I have no idea what the mixture of "blind from birth/a young age" and "blinded as an adult" is on this list, and I would imagine these groups would have very different perspectives. I myself was blinded in the right eye before I could form memories, but my left eye was good enough for anything short of driving until I was 25, and best I can tell, the biggest loss from lacking binocular vision is not being able to bring magic eye pictures into focus and having to watch 3D movies in 2-D. For a blind child using a computer for the first time, Tony is probably right that accessibility is the deciding factor. For an adult whose been a sighted computer user most of their life and was just recently blinded, I suspect familiarity plays a bigger role. When my left eye failed, I sought out a screen reader for Linux, and clung on to the first distro I found that let me go from an unusable system to a blind usable system without sighted assistance, but I had also been a full-time Linux user for the past 6 or 7 years at that point, felt lost whenever I had to use Windows 7 on a school computer, and didn't relish the idea of giving up the power of the Linux terminal or the convenience of Aptitude for installing/removing software, and I doubt I could ever give NVDA a fair chance even running on XP, the last version of Windows I was ever comfortable using. If anything, I would expect someone who has been using Windows since the 9x days and suddenly found themselves blinded would be even more reluctant to give Linux a fair chance than the sighted Windows user, probably feeling that learning to use Windows with a screen reader and without a monitor is a big enough challenge. Though, a thought occurred to me regarding helping new blind linux users learn the ropes, and it's something non-devs could contribute to. How feasible would it be to produce a CD-length audio tutorial that could be shipped along side install media for either a blind customized distro or the talking version of a mainline distro? Perhaps with the discs having brailled/embossed text on their labels that give the distro's name and version with one disc saying install and the other saying tutorial. The tutorial disc could also be offered for download in mp3, ogg vorbis, and flac, and if there's an image format that can preserve the data and audio tracks of a mixed-mode CD, perhaps offer an image where the data track boots a live environment that only plays the tutorial for the benefit of those who don't own a CD player and don't have a pre-existing accessible CD player application on their computer. If there's such a thing as a mixed-mode DVD, you could even combine the install and tutorial discs and expand the tutorials to include videos for sighted individuals assisting the blind user or who will be sharing the system with the blind user, and again with the disc being able to boot a live environment that can play the tutorials in the absence of other means. Such wouldn't be easy to produce, especially since effective teaching is hard, especially without student-teacher interaction, but such could go a long way towards making accessible Linux have a reasonable learning curve to those who weren't already experienced Linux users before they needed accessibility, and again, it's something blind Linux users who aren't devs could contribute to. Putting the tutorials on YouTube would probably be useful as well, but I still think bundling the tutorial with the install media and ensuring as much of the target audience can listen to them with existing equipment does the most to reduce the barrier to entry. -- Sincerely, Jeffery Wright President Emeritus, Nu Nu Chapter, Phi Theta Kappa. Former Secretary, Student Government Association, College of the Albemarle. _______________________________________________ Blinux-list mailing list Blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list