Hello, I recently mentioned in response to another message that I am interested in making fedora more accessible. Let me give a little information of what I find the state of accessibility in fedora is at the moment.
The first task is to get fedora installed, at the moment the LiveCD looks like the best option (there is a speakup modified version but this has serious limitations, some coming from the limitations of the text based installer of fedora and some relating to the speakup screen reader eg. I think speakup modified fedora requires a hardware speech synthesiser connected to an onboard serial port). At the moment the LiveCD contains all the correct packages to make it possible for a blind individual to perform an install of fedora independently without any extra hardware (IE. all they need is a computer which allows X to run and that the sound card works by default, my dell 510m laptop meets this fine, so probably do many other computers).
Although it is possible to install fedora independently as a blind user, I do hit a number of issues which can catch out even an experienced linux user, and so may entirely block a new comer. I will list two possible improvements which shouldn't take much to alter.
1. Add a log in sound to the default sound theme, otherwise how does a totally blind user know when the LiveCD is booted? That is particularly a problem when using a USB drive instead of a CD as there are no mechanical parts which make a noise while the drive is reading. 2. Once a blind user has the orca screen reader running on the LiveCD, if they select the icon on the desktop to install to HD orca sees the installer window as inaccessible. This is due to the installer running with extra privileges and fedora not being configured to allow orca to work with applications running like this. This can be simply solved by adding a file named /etc/orbitrc containing the following two lines: ORBIIOPIPv4=1 ORBIIOPUNIX=0
How possible would it be to have these changes made (particularly to the LiveCD)?
There are a few more changes which would help, some of them possibly having a greater impact but may take more work to solve, I think I will leave those for the moment, little by little.
Michael Whapples
fre 2010-04-02 klockan 20:58 +0100 skrev Michael Whapples:
- Once a blind user has the orca screen reader running on the LiveCD,
if they select the icon on the desktop to install to HD orca sees the installer window as inaccessible. This is due to the installer running with extra privileges and fedora not being configured to allow orca to work with applications running like this. This can be simply solved by adding a file named /etc/orbitrc containing the following two lines: ORBIIOPIPv4=1 ORBIIOPUNIX=0
That would probably be a security problem though perhaps it could be acceptable in a single-user Live environment.
But isn't the Corba interface obsoleted by the move of AT-SPI to D-Bus anyway?
http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/accessibility/atk/at-s...
I don't know if that helps much though.
/Alexander
Yes I think it may pose possible security issues (I don't actually know and have never heard what they are). I would only really suggest it for the Live environment, the installed system it should only exist if the user really needs it.
As for the bit of corba being depricated, yes that is the way its going but currently the at-spi stuff on dbus isn't fully ready so gnome accessibility still uses corba. I don't know when at-spi on dbus should be ready, I think there's a bit of an issue of alot to do but not quite enough to get it done as quick as might be desired.
Michael Whapples ----- Original Message ----- From: "Alexander Boström" abo@root.snowtree.se To: "Discussions about development for the Fedora desktop" desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org Sent: Sunday, April 11, 2010 11:07 AM Subject: Re: Improvements to make fedora more accessible to the blind
fre 2010-04-02 klockan 20:58 +0100 skrev Michael Whapples:
- Once a blind user has the orca screen reader running on the LiveCD,
if they select the icon on the desktop to install to HD orca sees the installer window as inaccessible. This is due to the installer running with extra privileges and fedora not being configured to allow orca to work with applications running like this. This can be simply solved by adding a file named /etc/orbitrc containing the following two lines: ORBIIOPIPv4=1 ORBIIOPUNIX=0
That would probably be a security problem though perhaps it could be acceptable in a single-user Live environment.
But isn't the Corba interface obsoleted by the move of AT-SPI to D-Bus anyway?
http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/accessibility/atk/at-s...
I don't know if that helps much though.
/Alexander
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Michael Whapples