# FreeBSD and the visually impaired.



## sossego (Aug 3, 2009)

Does anyone have any information on this topic?


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## SirDice (Aug 3, 2009)

Gnome (and I'm sure KDE does too) has some provisions for this, like the orca screenreader.


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## brd@ (Aug 5, 2009)

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.


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## sossego (Aug 6, 2009)

I'm testing vinux and knoppix adriane for a friend's mom.
Maybe just the app needs to be used through the emulation layer.


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## tangram (Aug 7, 2009)

There's an episode of the bsdtalk podcast on the subject, BSDTalk Podcast #63: Interview with Mitchell Smith.

Very educating and interesting podcast I should point out.


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## lm8 (Dec 15, 2009)

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.


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## tingo (Dec 15, 2009)

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.



Some people also use a Braille reader.


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## oliverh (Dec 15, 2009)

sossego said:
			
		

> Does anyone have any information on this topic?



This is technology mostly not available for FreeBSD. It's a pity, but Linux offers anything you want for such special interest even some distros.

http://knopper.net/knoppix-adriane/index-en.html


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## Pushrod (Dec 16, 2009)

I "see" that there is a need for further development of accessibility tools for FreeBSD.


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## Deleted member 9563 (Dec 16, 2009)

Pushrod said:
			
		

> I "see" that there is a need for further development of accessibility tools for FreeBSD.


So I've heard.


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## graudeejs (Dec 16, 2009)

https://forums.freebsd.org/showpost.php?p=53537&postcount=22


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## lm8 (Dec 17, 2009)

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?


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