FreeBSD and the visually impaired.

Gnome (and I'm sure KDE does too) has some provisions for this, like the orca screenreader.
 
A friend of mine is blind and she uses linux on the command line. She has some sort of screenreader that can easily read the text on her screen. It is pretty neat. I don't remember what it was called. It was really nice for her to get away from GUI environments that are designed with sight in mind. As far as I know though, this type of device requires a driver and FreeBSD does not have one.
 
I'm testing vinux and knoppix adriane for a friend's mom.
Maybe just the app needs to be used through the emulation layer.
 
I've been curious about this topic as well. I read some posts on the inx mailing list ( http://lists.inx.maincontent.net/htdig.cgi/inx-inx.maincontent.net/2008-December/000188.html ) about command line programs being useful for accessibility. Would be very curious to find out more about how visually impaired users can interface with console (instead of GUI) based programs. I know several good console applications and I've been experimenting with creating a menu for them using bash and dialog/freedialog. Would be nice if there was a way to make the menu more useable for visually impaired users as well.

Here are some links I ran across for tools and scripts that might be useful to the visually impaired:
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/ports.cgi?query=yasr&stype=all
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/url.cgi?ports/accessibility/orca/pkg-descr

http://linux.byexamples.com/archives/303/text-to-speech-synthesizer/
http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/2376/stdin-speaker-via-espeak

Would love to hear if anyone comes up with any other good links, information, references or resources on this topic. Would also be interested to hear if anyone starts a project to make FreeBSD more user friendly for the visually impaired.
 
brd@ said:
A friend of mine is blind and she uses linux on the command line. She has some sort of screenreader that can easily read the text on her screen. It is pretty neat. I don't remember what it was called. It was really nice for her to get away from GUI environments that are designed with sight in mind. As far as I know though, this type of device requires a driver and FreeBSD does not have one.
Click to expand...

Some people also use a Braille reader.
 
Speaking as a programmer, there are 3 things I think we could use to help further Open Source development in the area of accessibility.

1. A list of rules of thumb or guidelines for what would make programs more accessible. Am thinking of something like the 508E guidelines for web pages. However, this would be for C/C++ programs and other programming projects. It may have to be slanted for different language/user interface options. It would be great if people with accessibility issues in conjunction with some of the programmers who write these kind of programs could put together some guidelines based on experience. Then other programmers might find it easier to incorporate these techniques in their project.

2. A list of projects that include accessibility features and need developers or other help. That way interested programmers and others wanting to volunteer will know where they can offer their assistance and where their time and effort would be needed.

3. A pool of volunteers who have accessibility issues who are willing to test out software with accessibility features. When I write web sites, I try to design them with accessibility in mind and to follow 508E guidelines. However, without feedback from actual users, it's only your best guess as to whether what you've done is useable or not. There may be some simple change that would really improve things, but you don't have the same perspective to realize it.

Anyone interested in working further to bring more highly accessible programs to FreeBSD?
 
Hey all I am a blind nix user, I realise this is an old topic but for anyone who could package the software. Fenrir has tried to build in FreeBSD ability in it's screenreader. It is both console or GUJI though most GUI screenreader users use Orca quite successfully. The common Linujx CLI screenreader is Speakup and loads as kernel modules and can interface with software speech quite successfully.
 
fudge333 said:
Hey all I am a blind nix user, I realise this is an old topic but for anyone who could package the software. Fenrir has tried to build in FreeBSD ability in it's screenreader. It is both console or GUJI though most GUI screenreader users use Orca quite successfully. The common Linujx CLI screenreader is Speakup and loads as kernel modules and can interface with software speech quite successfully.
Click to expand...
Hi fudge333,

thank you for your feedback. We have an accessibility mailing list link, any feedback is welcome. I am going to start to work on FreeBSD vision accessibility. I'll be at the FreeBSD dev summit associated with EuroBSDCon, September 2024, Dublin, to describe a Roadmap to provide Assistive Technology for vision accessibility; I wrote an email link.
 
I'm visually impaired. Not using any supporting software but I have a fully keyboard-oriented environment built around openbox and xrandr. Still want to change things in the source. like a better desktop pager and theme integration but it's quite a complicated program.
This forum is bad, though, like many online text resources. You can't zoom in while also losing half of the screen space because everything scales up with the browser zoom-factor.. The remembering of discarded comments and inability to really cancel something so that it's gone, as well as the "who comments to who" interpretation are confusing.
 
It would be nice if this discussion "FreeBSD and the visually impaired" were not under "off topic".

Would be an idea that the moderation make a sub forum for the theme?
 
hruodr said:
Would be an idea that the moderation make a sub forum for the theme?
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Not enough content. Even this thread is 15 years old and there hasn't been much else posted with regards to accessibility. So the sub forum would contain maybe 2 or 3 threads.
 
SirDice said:
Not enough content. Even this thread is 15 years old and there hasn't been much else posted with regards to accessibility. So the sub forum would contain maybe 2 or 3 threads.
Click to expand...
Yes, you are right. Perhaps could be embedded in other theme? Or if it were there, perhaps more people would write?

You note how recurrent is the theme "Desktop". A lot of repetitive threads about bloated software that is almost nothing
except something for the eyes. That is for people that do not like CLI.

I think, visually impaired people use the computer in the other way. Software used by them could be also of interest for
a lot of people.

It is the contrast verbal vs visual. It is understandable that most people want to see and touch, but computers are
in essence more verbal, logical.
 
hruodr said:
I think, visually impaired people use the computer in the other way.
Click to expand...
Oh, certainly. There are also quite a few people with physical disabilities that have problems with the "traditional" keyboard and mouse interface of a modern computer. Not much is being done for them either.
 
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