Mark Peveto here. Luke, In Vinux 5.1 the best way to get console logins to speak is to indeed add your user to the audio group. The next time you reboot and start speechd-up, switch to a console, it'll read you your login prompt. Ok, so it isn't the most preferred way, but it does indeed work. Luke Yelavich here, reply inline. > On Fri, Apr 28, 2017 at 11:18:22PM AEST, Linux for blind general discussion wrote: > BTW.: During this discussion many things have been said about commercial > and specialized distros, but IMHO things like systemd or pulseaudio are > much more problematic for people who are using screen readers on linux. > For example getting sbl working with speech-dispatcher is a pain on > Debian... That is more to do with permissions than anything else. The problem right now, is that the software we use to help with reading the screen and/or speech synthesis is running as root. This on its own is not really acceptable, but right now it has to run as root to work with the various kernel interfaces provided to do its job. Fortunately this is fixable, thanks to systemd's logind and a bit of udev rules work. The problem then becomes working with audio, because again, permissions. By default, distros configure things such that audio is only accessible to the currently logged in user, whether it be on a text console, or in a graphical environment. Sure, you can add users wanting audio to the audio group, but this is actually not considered secure, and can break functionality of other things relating to audio. Can't think of anything specific right now, but I think I've heard of such in the past. Running everything needed by the user as a user when logged in is of course not a problem, assuming permissions are properly set for the various device nodes. The next problem needing solving is how to get screen reading with speech at a text login. Graphical login is not a problem, because the graphical login is running as a separate non-privileged user, so things are fine there. The text login runs as root. What needs to happen, is for work to be done on logind, to allow software to run as a non-privileged user, such that it can work with audio output and required device nodes. This non-privileged user and special session, would only have access when the current focus is on a terminal with nobody logged in. I implemented a solution back in the Vinux 4.0 days, when ConsoleKit was being used, but didn't send it upstream due to the impending change to logind. I have not yet taken the time to look into how the same could be done with logind. Luke _______________________________________________ Blinux-list mailing list Blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list _______________________________________________ Blinux-list mailing list Blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list