Arthur Pemberton writes: > On 9/8/06, Janina Sajka <janina@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > >Rahul writes: > >> Rahul wrote: > >> >Thomas J. Baker wrote: > >> >>I just read that orca has replaced gnopernicus as the screen reader for > >> >>gnome 2.16 and was wondering if this was going to make it to fc6? > >> >> > >> >> > >> >It is under discussion currently. > >> > > >And has, thankfully. > > > >Janina > > > > So is it that blind people can use Fedora 6, but can't install it > themselves? If they can, what is the procedure? The news for blind people is quite good, actually. Orca is making the Gnome desktop robust for blind people--at long last. Read on for the list of issues as I know them today, but the bottom line is major good news. Installation of FC6 Works well with text mode speech provided by Speakup, or via refreshable braille display. See: https://www.redhat.com/archives/blinux-list/2005-August/msg00038.html One error in the above, should have been 'ksdevice=eth0' One problem in telnet instal with tests 1 and 2, the Ctrl-Z to suspend to shell (and chkconfig --level 0123456 firstboot off) is broken. Doesn't yield a true shell. I am remiss not to have reported this yet--and it's pretty serious. firstboot is death to the blind user following a successful install. We are hoping to bring the Speakup Modified respin back fin the FC6 time frame. Hopefully the consolidation of xen will get out of our way. Ideally, adding a Speakup MOdified repo should help even further--but that's future. The above requires hardware speech or hardware braille. So, no accessible install of FC if you only have software speech to rely on. Usage FC6 will provide very usable Open Office Writer, Evolution, and a few additional apps like Totem. Also, I hear this morning that magnification is very usable--also news. We do have robust software speech access available on the console now, via Speakup and Emacspeak. Braille support continues excellent on the console, and is very good on the desktop as well. Gotchyas There's a world of functional difference between the open licensed Festival speech and what a user needs. Festival isn't really up to it--understandably. It was never designed to be an interactive display mechanism. Options include Software DEC Talk, and a Linux port of IBM's old "ViaVoice" which I will be selling under the name TTSynth (http://TTSynth.com). There is a problem here. You can't have both gnome-speech and a console speech driver accessing the same engine at the same time. So, switching from gui to console with one speech engine is clunky. Emacspeak users can sidestep this by using Orca's support for Emacspeak device drivers. We'll need a similar resolution for Speakup users, and the pressure will probably mount for that because FC6's gui will be so much more usable. Another issue: Support for accessible login (via devices like Ctrl-S ((speech)) or Ctrl-m ((magnification)) at the GDM screen) was broken last weekend. Don't yet know the latest but will be working on it over the weekend. My X started acting up just this week. Does not stay active. Crashes and reverts to GDM. Haven't figured out the culpirt yet, but have confirmed this on a couple of machines including with a new user account for testing. This problem also showed up last weekend. Janina > > -- > Fedora Core 5 and proud > > -- > fedora-devel-list mailing list > fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list -- Janina Sajka Phone: +1.202.595.7777 Partner, Capital Accessibility LLC http://CapitalAccessibility.Com Marketing the Owasys 22C talking screenless cell phone in the U.S. and Canada--Go to http://ScreenlessPhone.Com to learn more. Chair, Accessibility Workgroup Free Standards Group (FSG) janina@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://a11y.org -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
