Linux Distributions for the Vision Impaired?

MoreDruid asks: "Not long ago, I was asked to do some research for a blind relative from a friend of mine. I tried searching the sites of Red Hat, Debian, and some other distro's, but only SuSe came up with really useful information. I did find Blinux, but I think it's not really mature yet. Do any other Slashdotters have any experience in this field? What is a good distro to start with? This research is geared towards a blind newbie user, so are there any decent resources for vision impaired people so that he can get going with Linux?" This topic was discussed, in a more general sense, some two years ago, and there have since been questions dealing with several pieces of the puzzle. However, is there anything else out there, aside from the developing Blinux, that puts it all together in one nice package?

Comments

To put it all together...

[shaitand]

you just need to connect the dots.

MOD PARENT DOWN

[Anonymous Coward]

PLEASE MOD THIS FUCKER DOWN! Thank you! It is not funny to make jokes about Braille alphabet, you fucking asshole!

Re:MOD PARENT DOWN

[shaitand]

I'm reading this in braille right now you twit. I'll make fun of it if I care to. It's time someone devised a better system than this.

Re:MOD PARENT DOWN

[TC (WC)]

Hehe, how was that in any way offensive? I didn't think it was a particularly funny joke, but why can't you make fun of an alphabet?

The letter B looks like boobies! Hahaha!!!

Oh dear, I've offended all the people out there who can see and use the latin alphabet!

Re:MOD PARENT DOWN

[thumperward]

I believe the line you were looking for is "you insensitive clod".

- Chris

Re:MOD PARENT DOWN

[Anonymous Coward]

>The letter B looks like boobies! Hahaha!!!

if B is boobies, what's P ? ;)

Re:MOD PARENT DOWN

[Anonymous Coward]

One boob.

Any distro will do..

[zcat_NZ]

My blind friend uses RedHat. I set up getty on a serial port for him and he logs in using his 'companion' voice-synthesiser laptop. For surfing (links) reading email (pine) and playing mp3's (mpg123), this works out pretty well.

I'm trying to set up another box for him using Debian and festival, but I haven't had much luck so far.

Re:Any distro will do..

[MoreDruid]

I myself was thinking of using Debian, but I never heard of Festival... I'll definately look it up though. Debian is also using Gnome as the default desktop, and as someone else pointed out, has won an award for accessibility (I read that article already, so my mind is made up for Gnome).
Too bad I haven't heard any BSD users yet, I'm also interested in the features BSD has to offer - besides being dead :o)

Re:Any distro will do..

[Piquan]

BSD doesn't offer any particular features in this regard that I'm aware of. By and large, the same programs are available for both: Gnome, Festival, etc. Of course, it has an excellent package system, as we all know, so that may make it more useful to a newbie. The BSD-specific tools (such as package tools) also may be more likely to work in command-line or curses mode than some Linux analogues. (I use many BSD systems without displays, and command-line is faster for such issues than X.) I'm assuming that command-line utilities will be easier to work with a braille terminal than Gtk or other graphical utilities.

Gnome and Gnopernicus

[ZarKov]

I don't know what sort of stuff different distros will have installed by default. However, Gnome in general seems to be coming along very nicely with accessibiity. It was even given a Hellen Keller award last year. You should check out the Gnome Accessibility Page and Gnopernicus.

A bit OT: Linux-based GpsDrive speaks to its Users

[ivi]

The point of the question is obviously an OS...

But I just thought I'd mention a tool for GPS-
based navigation... that might help people
who are blind get around, eg for GeoCaching &
other outdoor activities like it.

Although map-based (so turn that off or use a
cheaper computer with a broken screen... ;-)
this sleek, Austrian-developed GpsDrive lets
one get verbal reports of position, direction
of travel, and proximity to points of interest
and/or chosen destinations.

I think it may be include in recent versions
of SuSE Linux, but I don't know if it gets
installed by default... Anyone know? (If so,
which version(s) are we talking about here?)

Enjoy! :-)

PS For Radio Amateurs, there is UI-View and
APRS (of which UI-View is a spin-off), that
can let several friends keep track of each
others' positions, using 2-way radios... a
bit like Garmin's Rino handheld radio/GPS,
but you have more access to the position-
reports coming out of the UI-View / APRS
boxes...

Of course, it might be good to develop a
GPS-based system that's better-suited
for the blind than any of the above...
which seem to assume a sighted user.

Links

[GiMP]

You might be interested in Elba.

It is marketed as a terminal to use with Windows; however, it is quite clear in mentioning that it runs Linux and the user is very able to (and encouraged) to use the Linux operating system which is installed on the device.

It comes in two flavors, braille and qwerty keyboards. The only downside is that it is terribly expensive.

Re:Links

[GiMP]

This is a site that sells the Elba, the prices are listed on the page (for those too lazy to click, it starts at $3,995.00)

Re:Links

[Piquan]

What's that across the front that looks like a row of LEDs?

Re:Links

[GiMP]

I honestly don't know. I don't own one of them, but they look neat. I'm not blind so hopefully I'll never need one; however, if I do become blind I might consider getting one :)

I found it looking for some linux-for-the-blind stuff because I have very poor eyesight and some days my eyes get quite strained and it becomes difficult to work. Being the paranoid guy that I am, I decided to look for solutions now in the event that I ever do become blind. Hopefully this isn't something that happens; however, I won't take chances either :)

Re:Links

[MoreDruid]

This might be cool, but I don't know how his financial situation is (he's 15 years old), so I'm looking into some low-to-no cost options. I don't even know which Braille-terminal he has (he does have one though). This makes it all a bit more difficult. Yesterday I finally got around to playing with the Knoppix 3.2 (linux-live-on-CD) version, and lo and behold: there's an option for a braille config as well. That's really good, now I can put that disk in the guys box and see if any weird things are going to happen - without messing up his box.
You mentioned you have very bad vision: I stumbled accross this site, which you might find of use.

Re:Links

[cyb97]

If I only knew braille this would be wicked coupled with a mirror of project gutenberg.... Portable free books!

Re:Links

[GiMP]

I'm not only familiar with that site, one of my employers hosts that site ;) I haven't managed to get it to work, but maybe it just requires more patience.

Re:Links

[gmhowell]

That's too clunky. Check out this. Much smaller, half the price. Sadly, I plan on buying one for my wife. BTW, she taught herself Braille in about 6 weeks. Speed was slow, but is progressing nicely. OTOH, I imagine it would take you a little longer to learn, as I'm guessing you have other options available.

Still, it's pretty cool. Especially if you ever see how large a Braille book is.

Re:Links

[gmhowell]

"Easy access navigation buttons" are the black bumps on the front of the machine. Behind that are the Braille display cells.

Re:Links

[gmhowell]

Talk to your local rehab office. They should be able to pony up some funds for any extra equipment. If he is blind and not deaf, say a prayer every day, as equipment and help is much easier to find. But make sure he learns Braille, and doesn't use text-to-speech as a crutch.

suse

[dago]

Why not SuSE ???

You stated in you question that you found info and in fact, even the install program seems to be blind-friendly (it always look for braille display)

Re:suse

[MoreDruid]

I know, but I lack experience, and I was wondering if anyone out there has some knowledge regarding this issue. I'll definately go look in the SuSe newsgroups though.

Re:suse

[dago]

If the distro change bothers you, I switched from (mainly) redhat to (mainly) suse when I took my first job (due to geographical distribution) without any problems. Few files are different.

Now, for the blind-* stuff, I really don't know.

I just set up a text to speech with festival + mbrola, but that was "for the fun", not for real use. It was quite easy anyway.

SuSE has also pretty decent support when you buy it.

Knoppix

[halfnerd]

I think knoppix has an option to boot up with some kind of braille-tty for blind people. Haven't tried it out though.

seul?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe someone at seul.org could help you

knoppix

[phre4k]

Given that it is an inexpirenced user knoppix would be a good bet. The new version should detect the braille thing automagically.

/Esben

Debian (Re:Any distro will do..)

[Mensa Babe]

I myself was thinking of using Debian, but I never heard of Festival... I'll definately look it up though.

Festival is a speech synthesis system. Under Debian, just type "apt-get install festival festival-doc" (and festival-dev if you want to use it in your own programs). It has a nice built-in Scheme-based command interpreter.

I think Debian is a great choice for vision impaired users. Take a look at the Debian Accessibility Project and Accessibility HOWTO. There are even speakup enabled boot floppies for Woody (Debian 3.0, the current stable version).

Also, take a look at BrlSpeak, a Braille and Speech Mini-Distribution of GNU/Linux. It is based on Debian, developed by Osvaldo La Rosa, visually impaired Debian user. Let me quote the website:

Objective:
BrlSpeak is here to make life easier for blind people who wish to install a GNU/Linux distribution on their computer WITHOUT ANY assistance from a sighted person. The objective is to create and develop a blindfriendly GNU/Linux distribution enabling a blind user:
a) To preconfigure the braille driver config file before running GNU/Linux
b) To compile the braille driver without having to see (or to hear)
c) To have the braille display immediately operational when booting GNU/Linux for the first time

BrlSpeak can be installed on a FAT partition. There's a 36MB .zip file or CD ISO9660 image for download.

There's also Free(b)deb, a Free(b)soft's specialized linux distribution based on Debian GNU/Linux. From the website:

The goal of the Free(b)deb project is to provide a specialized distribution of complete Debian GNU/Linux operating system including specialized software, which enables blind and visually impaired users to work with computer.

However I'm not sure how to install it and where to download it from.

(I don't talk about Blinux, as it has already been mentioned in the story.)

Good luck.

No very good options

[Anonymous Coward]

There are no good options. RedHat looked like they were going in the right direction when they included speakup in the kernel, but that was removed in more recent versions (RedHat 8 I think) due to problems. You can still get custom install images from the speakup website. As for using a Linux machine "just like everyone else", Gnome is building the framework for screen readers, but you have to compile them from source at this point, and that is not an easy task at all. Blind people should not have a seperate distribution. Major distributions need to become accessable. --WHB

Blinux

[fist_187]

what, no screenshots?

brlspeak

[sebfrance]

Hello, A friend and I have been working for a year on a system that makes GNU/Linux Debian installable in autonomy by a blind person, and without partitioning. It's definitely for beginners, it uses ext2/3 and swap loopbacks on a fat32 partition, making it easy to install and remove if needed. Everything (braille driver, language etc...) is preconfigured under dos (freedos), and when linux boots, it loads the appropriate braille driver A group of testers have already gotten the system to run, although it should still be considered as a beta. we provide three installation types, a minimum one (about 100MB, a full braille one, and a vocal+braille one, which will contain preconfigured emacspeak, festival, and mbrola) The main goal is to be able to make a system people can quickly try on their own. Future versions will include a basic network configurator, and may include fips, in order to install the same way but on real partitions.

Speakup

[MattyIce]

A group of individuals has put together a kernel-based speech output system that works with several distros and is available precompiled on bootable floppies and CD's. The installation will speak provided their is a supported hardware synthesizer present. Check the Speakup Homepage for more information.

Slackware

[Anonymous Coward]

Slackware has speakup support afaik. Speakup is used by loading a special kernel when booting the installation CD.

Thx to all the people

[MoreDruid]

that gave all this valuable information. With all the help I got here, I decided to get him SuSe Linux, so his mom and dad can read the books that come with the packaged distro, and because SuSe also offers support, I figured (them being n00bz) that was the best I could do for them. I set his box up - this was very straightforward clicketyclick stuff and I showed him and his parents some things about how to get around the system. He's happily using the system for more than a week now, and they're really satisfied with it. I gave them a few pointers to other accessibility websites and I haven't heard from them since, so I guess it's all good.