Jason, Red Hat has made it very clear that they have no interest in accessibility, so I highly doubt that just contacting them would do any good. I say this from looking at their sites and finding nothing at all about accessibility. They don't even ship Speakup with RHEL as far as I'm aware, but since it's in staging, maybe they do now. As I recall, 6.2 is rather old and uses a custom kernel with a large set of patches, so I don't think you'll get Speakup to compile. You could try compiling as modules and see if it works, but I wouldn't hold my breath. I think the same applies to CentOS as well. I'm not sure about Fedora. I don't know if Australia has any kind of accessibility laws, but I know the US and UK do. Probably someone in the US would have to ask Red Hat to make an accessible solution available which they would probably refuse to do. It would then have to go to lawyers to settle. It might not end up in a suit, but it very well might. Most likely, an advocacy organization like the ACB or NFB would have to push Red Hat and it could take years. Obviously, that won't help with the immediate problem. By law, they are required to provide an accessibility solution for you. Since you're in Australia, I really don't know if any of this would apply to you or not. I would suggest asking if you can do the certification with ssh to the RHEL box. There are ssh clients for Linux and Windows, so one way or the other, you could have speech. If they let you bring your own laptop, you could install Debian, Arch or Ubuntu on it which would give you Speakup. If not, you could see if they would let you ssh from Windows with NVDA or a different Windows screen reader. As I said, they're required to provide an alternative solution in the US, so you might even be able to make them let you borrow a machine. I don't know anything about your work, but a better approach might be to talk to your employer. Yes, I realize that Red Hat gives the certification, but your employer might be able to somehow work with Red Hat and/or let you borrow a machine, especially since the point in getting it is for work. In the US, employers with more than I think 10 employees are required to make accomodations as necessary for accessibility. An example would be buying someone a screen reader so they can do their job. In conclusion, I would suggest studying the Americans with Disabilities Act, or ADA. I really don't know if it will help you, but at least you'll know what's required by US companies. The ACB has several ADA seminars from the various conventions online. I'm sure the NFB does as well. I would suggest the following two sites: http://www.acb.org/ http://www.acbradio.org/ I know there is an organization in Australia as well which might be able to help. Please let us know what happens as I would be very interested to see what Red Hat says. On 3/28/2013 10:16 PM, Jason White wrote: > Sean Murphy<speakup at linux-speakup.org> wrote: >> >> I am going to prep for the Red Hat Admin certifications. I need to know if what screen reader is available on the console? Speakup you have to compile into the Kernel. So I am not sure if this can be >> done or not. Any suggestions on how to get this console to work? > > I don't know, but have you contacted Red Hat about it? It's their > certification, after all, hence in their business interests to ensure it's > accessible to you. there might also be legal implications depending on the > laws in force in your country. > > I am sure that others on this list will have advice to offer, but I think > raising the issue with Red Hat would be a very good idea not only for you but > for the benefit of others with access needs.
