Re: the push to get rid of CONFIG_VT in the kernel and the future of Speakup

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You can switch to a character user interface and use speakup even after starting the graphical user interface. But as I said, I don't consider that a key part of the linux accessibility infrastructure. Again, I understand some people prefer to use the character user interface full time. I could understand if the linux big shots said that was going to have to go away. But doing something that would make it impossible for blind people to have access to the boot messages that sighted people get -- that is unacceptable. Well, like somebody else said, we may have to accept it. But that would be very bad.

On 10/08/14 16:50, Glenn wrote:
Isn't SpeakUp used in the terminal after booting to a GUI?
----- Original Message -----
From: "John G. Heim" <jheim@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux."
<speakup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2014 4:37 PM
Subject: Re: the push to get rid of CONFIG_VT in the kernel and the future
of Speakup


Yeah, if you're a linux sysadmin, hardware speech is not some luxury you
can do without.  It's not a matter of convenience, it's a matter of
possible or not possible.

I know there are still some people who use speakup as their primary
screen reader. But that user base has to be dwindling. In my opinion,
the only reason that speakup remains a key part of the linux
infrastructure is that it allows blind systems admins to get speech
during boot. I think it would be understandible if they said you blind
people will just have to  use the GUI if not for the fact that if you
are a sys admin, you need those boot messages.

On 10/08/14 15:16, Al Sten-Clanton wrote:
My knowledge of this business is minimal, but I thought that one
advantage of the current approach, if you can use a hardware speech
synthesizer, is that you can get at least some of the boot-up
messages--not as early as sighted folks get them, but well before
software speech can kick in.  If this is true, wouldn't the proposed
change be a very builty-in reduction in non-visual access?

Al

On 10/08/2014 03:43 PM, Kyle wrote:
It does appear to me that something like this will force more of Speakup
into userspace. However, unlike others, I'm not entirely opposed to the
idea of Speakup leaving the kernel, and I think it can only be a good
thing, especially on newer machines, where dedicated serial ports are
all but obsolete, and software in userspace can take better advantage of
things like Pulseaudio and libusb, meaning more extensive software and
hardware speech support. For example, there would no longer be a need
for kernel modules to control speech synthesizers, and there would no
longer be a need to have external userspace connectors such as Espeakup,
as the entire Speakup screen reader could be moved into userspace, and
anything that interfaces with a speech synthesizer could be either
internal or could be a library that interfaces with a speech API like
speech-dispatcher or others. Even better, if Speakup is moved entirely
into userspace, it could give rise to far better access to consoles on
*BSD and other Unix operating systems, as the code could be far more
portable between operating systems when it doesn't have to be tied into
a specific kernel. Just my $0.02 BSD. That's Bahamian dollars lol.
~Kyle
http://kyle.tk/

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http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

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http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup





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