[Fedora-livecd-list] Accessibility on the LiveCD and installing from LiveCD

[Michael Whapples]

Hello,
Firstly let me briefly introduce myself. I have been using Linux for 
some years now, originally starting out in text consoles but for the 
last couple of years more and more in the gnome desktop. I am a blind 
computer user so rely on assistive technologies such as orca 
http://live.gnome.org/Orca. My main history has been on distributions 
such as slackware and debian, however I felt may be time to start 
looking around (partly as I want to do some work on promoting the 
accessibility in Linux and for that I may be better with a distribution 
such as fedora).

Now to the actual main subject. I just tried installing fedora 12 from 
the LiveCD. In the main the process is reasonably accessible (there are 
a few points I would alter for a really good user experience, but still 
usable), however when I went to reboot the system after running the 
installer I hit a big show stopper, the first boot application is 
inaccessible and I couldn't find any work around. The issue is that it 
runs before loading the full gnome desktop so I can't launch orca and 
there is no text based screen reader (eg. speakup or YASR). I have one 
question, why does fedora use this first boot application? other 
distributions seem to be able to do all that this does (I read the quick 
start guide for details of what the first boot application does) on the 
LiveCD installer (eg. opensuse, opensolaris, GRML's grml2hd, etc). Would 
it be possible for these things to be dealt with on the LiveCD? If there 
is a good reason why some may want the first boot application, may be it 
could be an optional thing (eg. in the liveinst programme we have a 
checkbox for "Use first boot application", if ticked the first boot 
application will be used, if unticked user configuration will be done in 
liveinst). Another alternative, may be not so satisfactory to me, have 
some sort of accessibility for first boot. This would take the form emit 
a sound (may be a beep) when first boot starts, the user could use a 
keyboard shortcut to load a screen reader. May be accessibility for 
first boot could be set to start automatically on the LiveCD (may be a 
check box, may be if accessibility is enabled on the LiveCD 
accessibility for first boot could be enabled). The big question would 
be though, what screen reader will work with first boot? I am sorry I 
can't answer this as I can't see the first boot application and so don't 
know if it is text based, GTK based, etc.

Other than the speakup modified fedora (which I don't think is an 
official fedora distribution) there is no accessible way for a blind 
user to install fedora. Anyway for what I need the speakup modified 
fedora will not do as it uses the text based installer and so will use 
the whole disk, but I have windows on that disk and want to preserve the 
windows installation. The LiveCD looks like the most promising solution 
for installing fedora if the show stopper problem I mentioned above is 
solved.

I will quickly say why I feel accessible install of fedora should 
matter. While accessibility of the desktop system itself is important, 
many computers don't come with Linux preinstalled, and so many users may 
need to install it themselves. Now the LiveCD gives me a good chance to 
see what fedora can do (in fact I will be honest and say in the past 
that generally fedora has been overlooked by me, but I decided to look 
at the LiveCD and it has changed my mind), and if you like what you see 
you want to get it installed. Its not always possible to get sighted 
assistance and sometimes the sighted assistant may not be as computer 
knowledgeable as you would hope, so it would be best if the blind user 
could install it independently. Other distributions have made it 
possible for blind users to do an accessible install (ubuntu, opensuse, 
opensolaris, slackware and debian, possibly others) and so fedora falls 
behind in this respect. Talking personally, I cannot proceed with fedora 
at the current time as I don't have the appropriate support to get 
beyond the first boot screen.

I would be prepared to work with fedora developers to try and solve this 
major issue and other smaller issues regarding the accessibility of 
installing fedora from LiveCD. Would it be best for me to ask this else 
where or approach anyone in particular?

Michael Whapples