Orca to replace gnopernicus in gnome 2.16...fc6 too?

Janina Sajka janina at rednote.net
Fri Sep 8 21:56:41 UTC 2006


Arthur Pemberton writes:
> On 9/8/06, Janina Sajka <janina at rednote.net> wrote:
> >Rahul writes:
> >> Rahul wrote:
> >> >Thomas J. Baker wrote:
> >> >>I just read that orca has replaced gnopernicus as the screen reader for
> >> >>gnome 2.16 and was wondering if this was going to make it to fc6?
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >It is under discussion currently.
> >> >
> >And has, thankfully.
> >
> >Janina
> >
> 
> So is it that blind people can use Fedora 6, but can't install it
> themselves? If they can, what is the procedure?

The news for blind people is quite good, actually. Orca is making the
Gnome desktop robust for blind people--at long last. Read on for the
list of issues as I know them today, but the bottom line is major good
news.

Installation of FC6

Works well with text mode speech provided by Speakup, or via refreshable
braille display. See:

https://www.redhat.com/archives/blinux-list/2005-August/msg00038.html

One error in the above, should have been 'ksdevice=eth0'

One problem in telnet instal with tests 1 and 2, the Ctrl-Z to suspend
to shell (and chkconfig --level 0123456 firstboot off) is broken.
Doesn't yield a true shell. I am remiss not to have reported this
yet--and it's pretty serious. firstboot is death to the blind user
following a successful install.

We are hoping to bring the Speakup Modified respin back fin the FC6 time
frame. Hopefully the consolidation of xen will get out of our way.

Ideally, adding a Speakup MOdified repo should help even further--but
that's future.

The above requires hardware speech or hardware braille. So, no
accessible install of FC if you only have software speech to rely on.

Usage

FC6 will provide very usable Open Office Writer, Evolution, and a few
additional apps like Totem. Also, I hear this morning that magnification
is very usable--also news.

We do have robust software speech access available on the console now,
via Speakup and Emacspeak. Braille support continues excellent on the
console, and is very good on the desktop as well.

Gotchyas

There's a world of functional difference between the open licensed
Festival speech and what a user needs. Festival isn't really up to
it--understandably. It was never designed to be an interactive display
mechanism. Options include Software DEC Talk, and a Linux port of IBM's
old "ViaVoice" which I will be selling under the name TTSynth
(http://TTSynth.com).

There is a problem here. You can't have both gnome-speech and a console
speech driver accessing the same engine at the same time. So, switching
from gui to console with one speech engine is clunky. Emacspeak users
can sidestep this by using Orca's support for Emacspeak device drivers.
We'll need a similar resolution for Speakup users, and the pressure will
probably mount for that because FC6's gui will be so much more usable.

Another issue: Support for accessible login (via devices like Ctrl-S
((speech)) or Ctrl-m ((magnification)) at the GDM screen) was broken
last weekend. Don't yet know the latest but will be working on it over
the weekend.

My X started acting up just this week. Does not stay active. Crashes and
reverts to GDM. Haven't figured out the culpirt yet, but have confirmed
this on a couple of machines including with a new user account for
testing. This problem also showed up last weekend.

Janina

> 
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-- 

Janina Sajka				Phone: +1.202.595.7777
Partner, Capital Accessibility LLC	http://CapitalAccessibility.Com

Marketing the Owasys 22C talking screenless cell phone in the U.S. and Canada--Go to http://ScreenlessPhone.Com to learn more.

Chair, Accessibility Workgroup		Free Standards Group (FSG)
janina at freestandards.org		http://a11y.org




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