Mark Trickett <marktrickett@gmail.com> wrote:
I am making some efforts, in association with others, to set up a bootable USB stick with Knoppix for the Adrienne audio desktop for a blind user.
I've heard of this environment, but very few Linux users who are blind actually use it. I'm not saying that it's a bad idea to set this up, but only that support options will be limited because, frankly, it isn't what most people are running. For speech in an Emacs environment, install Emacspeak. For speech at the console, install Speakup. For speech under X11, install Orca (preferably version 3.8 with Gnome 3.8).
Since they are a diabetic, and have regular finger pricking for a blood sample for the sugar levels, setting up a braille output device is not an option.
That's unfortunate.
I am cooperating with another person by email (and snail mail, to the US) in this endeavour. I would appreciate comments about which browsers are better with various audio environments, and to remember that the established system will require to be run solely by the audio, including confirming all typed keys for input.
These days, a Javascript-capable browser is a necessity. With this in mind, I'll give you three options: 1. Orca + Firefox. This is what I use when not in Emacs or at the console (i.e., for Web sites that really require scripting). 2. Orca + Epiphany-browser. I don't know how reliable it is these days, although work has been ongoing. For best results, you would need the latest software releases - the same holds for anything involving Orca. When last I tried this combination, it worked well but tended to crash. However, this was under Debian/Gnome 3.4. 3. Chrome/Chromium + ChromeVox. For speech-only access this should be very good. You'll need a version of Chrome/Chromium that includes support for Native Client (NACL). Note that the packages in Debian and derived distributions don't include this, so you'll need to run a build from elsewhere. ChromeVox can be downloaded and installed separately. ChromeVox has excellent navigation features and is designed as a speech-only extension to Chrome/Chromium. I don't use it because it's speech only and I want my braille display to work too. If LibreOffice needs to be part of the package, then be aware that a major accessibility regression introduced in version 3.6 have been fixed as of versin 4.0.3. There are also various accessibility-related distributions (mostly Ubuntu variants) that have much of the above pre-configured - notably, Vinux and Sonar. I haven't used them, since I'm perfectly capable of doing the configuring and I find Debian a better starting point from which to customize a system to meet my needs. However, they do exist and have their adherents (mostly people who are new to Linux).