I agree with this sentiment. Unfortunately none of us can do anything when developers make an active choice not to pursue accessibility matters. Yes Fedora is accessible and can be installed with no sight although it's not very easy. This is not an exhaustive list but in my experience the following distros are installable by me, with absolutely no sight, out-of-the-box: * Debian * Trisquel * Talking Arch * Talking Parabola Libre (based on talking Arch) * Vinux (losing the plot) * Ubuntu, with particular reference to Ubuntu Mate alpha There are others and the above is not in any particular order although I have to say Trisquel is my current favourite. The live CD starts to talk if you just leave the keyboard alone for a couple of minutes. Now, name and shame, there was a recent post to the Orca list in which somebody said they had spoken to a developer from Linux Mint who declared they had no interest in accessibility, and presumably had no intention of bothering with it. Slackware seems similarly afflicted, although read on... I have 2 Dell Latitude D630 laptops and a Dolphin Apollo hardware synth. One D630 successfully boots the latest 64-bit Slackware when I type: speakup.s speakup.synth=apollo At the boot prompt, the other does not. BIOS settings on both are correct for the serial port to work. This email now encourages me to try an earlier Slackware because I did not know there was a problem with recent versions. Docs on the disk seem to suggest the huge.s kernel now also has speakup in it and the speakup.s kernel, and presumably the boot params lead to the huge kernel anyway. Mike On 07/02/2015 08:52, Steve Holmes wrote: > I hate hearing stuff like this; we have made so much progress over the > years in making Linux accessible and then these things start coming > up. When you can't even boot a basic system with current versions of > installer and kernel, then there is something seriously wrong! > > I grew up on Slackware clear back in 1994 or so. I then had to login > from a different computer running a terminal emulator but that was a > start. > > As for me, I like Arch Linux and there is a current talking image > available. I thought Fedora was currently accessible; no? > > On Fri, Feb 06, 2015 at 08:37:32PM -0500, Jude DaShiell wrote: >> I was trying to install a current version of slackware using the litetalk >> synthesizer earlier. Given slackware's installer kernel is broken, I got >> some remote sighted assistance and was told wait 30 seconds then key in >> boot parameters and that fails persistently insofaras getting speech up. >> So apparently slackware and Fedora have something in common. In both >> cases an installer interested in doing an accessible installation needs to >> find and download an earlier version of the operating systems that did >> install accessibly and use that version to install then upgrade through >> the versions to get to current versions. Moonshine on Fedora worked on >> intel machines in the past and if my memory is correct, maybe slackware >> 11.2 ought to be able to get it done in this case. What I will do now is >> take a stab at getting slackware 11.2 to speak and if that fails as time >> and my download quotas permit will try other versions in the future. This >> is now a low priority back burner project. I was surprised the >> distribution got broken in this way. >> >> >> >> jude <jdashiel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Twitter: @JudeDaShiell >> _______________________________________________ >> Speakup mailing list >> Speakup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx >> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup > _______________________________________________ > Speakup mailing list > Speakup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup > -- Michael A. Ray Analyst/Programmer Witley, Surrey, South-east UK Don't judge my disability until you witness my ability Interested in accessibility on the Raspberry Pi? Visit: http://www.raspberryvi.org/ >From where you can join our mailing list for visually-impaired Pi hackers _______________________________________________ Speakup mailing list Speakup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
