Has anyone worked with visually impaired individuals and adaptive solutions with Fedora? I want to learn this and am near total blindness not sure what all is out there in making this OS acessable or how and if the windows bassed software will work within this enviroment. Any insite, ideas or assistance would be most helpful.
On Wed, 2009-03-25 at 21:17 -0700, Charles Ross wrote:
Has anyone worked with visually impaired individuals and adaptive solutions with Fedora? I want to learn this and am near total blindness not sure what all is out there in making this OS acessable or how and if the windows bassed software will work within this enviroment. Any insite, ideas or assistance would be most helpful.
Speakup Modified is a Fedora-derived distro that includes additional assistive tools. They might be worth taking a look at.
On 3/26/09, Charles Ross rossce_tech@yahoo.com wrote:
Has anyone worked with visually impaired individuals and adaptive solutions with Fedora? I want to learn this and am near total blindness not sure what all is out there in making this OS acessable or how and if the windows bassed software will work within this enviroment. Any insite, ideas or assistance would be most helpful.
I haven't but I've wondered idly about this area for a while and have some bookmarks which I hope will be useful to you.
There used to be a fair number of interesting posts from a "William F. Acker" on speakup and other related technologies. See e.g. this link from mid-2008
http://markmail.org/message/e3ge6326si5ddurr
Similarly Janina Sajka seems to be involved in accessibility issues and was involved with Colin Walters in a thread about how to fix GConf settings so that the interaction between Speakup, orca, GDM and PulseAudio is managed properly. It sounds like she might be worth getting in touch with:
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01240.ht...
A much earlier (Fedora 7) post was reported by Rahul Sundaram in Fedora Weekly News:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue102#A_view_of_Linux_as_introduced_by_...
Some (unused) accessibility notes from the Fedora 7 era may or may not be of use: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Beats/Accessibility
Good luck, Oisin Feeley
On Thursday 26 March 2009 13:50:21 Oisin Feeley wrote:
On 3/26/09, Charles Ross rossce_tech@yahoo.com wrote:
Has anyone worked with visually impaired individuals and adaptive solutions with Fedora? I want to learn this and am near total blindness not sure what all is out there in making this OS acessable or how and if the windows bassed software will work within this enviroment. Any insite, ideas or assistance would be most helpful.
I haven't but I've wondered idly about this area for a while and have some bookmarks which I hope will be useful to you.
There used to be a fair number of interesting posts from a "William F. Acker" on speakup and other related technologies. See e.g. this link from mid-2008
http://markmail.org/message/e3ge6326si5ddurr
Similarly Janina Sajka seems to be involved in accessibility issues and was involved with Colin Walters in a thread about how to fix GConf settings so that the interaction between Speakup, orca, GDM and PulseAudio is managed properly. It sounds like she might be worth getting in touch with:
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01240.h tml
A much earlier (Fedora 7) post was reported by Rahul Sundaram in Fedora Weekly News:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue102#A_view_of_Linux_as_introduced_by _a_blind_user_via_Orca
Some (unused) accessibility notes from the Fedora 7 era may or may not be of use: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Beats/Accessibility
KDE offers KTTS, K-text-to-speech, which is used by KMouth. I haven't used it, so can't comment on it, but http://accessibility.kde.org/developer/kttsd/ says
* Speak any text from the KDE clipboard. * Speak any plain text file. * Speak all or any portion of a text file from Kate, including instances where Kate is embedded in another KDE application. * Speak all or any portion of an HTML page from Konqueror. * Use as the speech backend for KMouth and KSayIt. * Speak KDE notifications (KNotify). * Long text is parsed into sentences. User may backup by sentence or paragraph, replay, pause, and stop playing. * Audio output via aRts, GStreamer (version 0.8.7 or later), or aKode. * User-configurable filters for substituting misspoken words, choosing speech synthesizers, and transforming XHMTL/XML documents.
Anne
Anne Wilson wrote:
KDE offers KTTS, K-text-to-speech, which is used by KMouth.
The biggest problem there is that it doesn't actually read the content of Qt widgets. So while it may help people with partial eyesight like the original poster in this thread, it won't really work for completely blind users. Qt 4 actually has an accessibility framework, but I'm not aware of any screen readers using it yet. Everything's waiting for AT-SPI-D-Bus, the new cross-desktop accessibility framework (which will allow using Orca to screenread Qt 4 apps as well, and hopefully we'll also get a KDE screenreader) which is being worked on.
Kevin Kofler
On Saturday 28 March 2009 03:40:47 Kevin Kofler wrote:
Anne Wilson wrote:
KDE offers KTTS, K-text-to-speech, which is used by KMouth.
The biggest problem there is that it doesn't actually read the content of Qt widgets. So while it may help people with partial eyesight like the original poster in this thread, it won't really work for completely blind users. Qt 4 actually has an accessibility framework, but I'm not aware of any screen readers using it yet. Everything's waiting for AT-SPI-D-Bus, the new cross-desktop accessibility framework (which will allow using Orca to screenread Qt 4 apps as well, and hopefully we'll also get a KDE screenreader) which is being worked on.
Yes, for Charles, KMag may well be helpful, but I think he really needs a screenreader as well. I wonder how far in the future this is? I know, 'How long is a piece of string'? :-)
Anne
Great just can't wait... I have the same issues in windows expecialy in IM's maybe this feature will expand to PDF read as well. My string kwnologde goes as far as cut and paste and thats only if I get it right before the glue drys :)
----- Original Message ---- From: Anne Wilson cannewilson@googlemail.com To: For testers of Fedora Core development releases fedora-test-list@redhat.com Sent: Saturday, March 28, 2009 4:09:37 AM Subject: Re: Adaptive Technology
On Saturday 28 March 2009 03:40:47 Kevin Kofler wrote:
Anne Wilson wrote:
KDE offers KTTS, K-text-to-speech, which is used by KMouth.
The biggest problem there is that it doesn't actually read the content of Qt widgets. So while it may help people with partial eyesight like the original poster in this thread, it won't really work for completely blind users. Qt 4 actually has an accessibility framework, but I'm not aware of any screen readers using it yet. Everything's waiting for AT-SPI-D-Bus, the new cross-desktop accessibility framework (which will allow using Orca to screenread Qt 4 apps as well, and hopefully we'll also get a KDE screenreader) which is being worked on.
Yes, for Charles, KMag may well be helpful, but I think he really needs a screenreader as well. I wonder how far in the future this is? I know, 'How long is a piece of string'? :-)
Anne
Thanks -- Sometimes I think I am getting in over my head trying to learn but I keep pushing on. If I can assist anyone in questions surrounding the requirements for someont with a visuial impairement ie.(screen maginification, teaders, high constract and reverse colors) feel free to call upon me. If such leads to the devlopment and intergration of such I feel many will benefit. Charlie CERoss Technologies www.cerosstechnologies.com Also I am interested in social networking as to learn and use of FEDORIA and similar systems.
----- Original Message ---- From: Oisin Feeley oisin.feeley@gmail.com To: For testers of Fedora Core development releases fedora-test-list@redhat.com Sent: Thursday, March 26, 2009 9:50:21 AM Subject: Re: Adaptive Technology
On 3/26/09, Charles Ross rossce_tech@yahoo.com wrote:
Has anyone worked with visually impaired individuals and adaptive solutions with Fedora? I want to learn this and am near total blindness not sure what all is out there in making this OS acessable or how and if the windows bassed software will work within this enviroment. Any insite, ideas or assistance would be most helpful.
I haven't but I've wondered idly about this area for a while and have some bookmarks which I hope will be useful to you.
There used to be a fair number of interesting posts from a "William F. Acker" on speakup and other related technologies. See e.g. this link from mid-2008
http://markmail.org/message/e3ge6326si5ddurr
Similarly Janina Sajka seems to be involved in accessibility issues and was involved with Colin Walters in a thread about how to fix GConf settings so that the interaction between Speakup, orca, GDM and PulseAudio is managed properly. It sounds like she might be worth getting in touch with:
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01240.ht...
A much earlier (Fedora 7) post was reported by Rahul Sundaram in Fedora Weekly News:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue102#A_view_of_Linux_as_introduced_by_...
Some (unused) accessibility notes from the Fedora 7 era may or may not be of use: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Beats/Accessibility
Good luck, Oisin Feeley
On Thursday 26 March 2009 18:19:39 Charles Ross wrote:
Thanks -- Sometimes I think I am getting in over my head trying to learn but I keep pushing on. If I can assist anyone in questions surrounding the requirements for someont with a visuial impairement ie.(screen maginification, teaders, high constract and reverse colors) feel free to call upon me. If such leads to the devlopment and intergration of such I feel many will benefit. Charlie CERoss Technologies www.cerosstechnologies.com Also I am interested in social networking as to learn and use of FEDORIA and similar systems.
KDE also has a screen magnifier called kmag. However, I have no experience of using it.
Perhaps you would care to try kmag and kmouth (which uses ktts). If you have questions about their use I could possibly get answers for you. There is also a low-volume dedicated mailing list at kde-accessibility@kde.org
Anne
-
Anne Wilson -
Charles Ross -
Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams -
Kevin Kofler -
Oisin Feeley