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The State of Linux Accessibility
Dog's_Breakfast writes "This week's edition of DistroWatch Weekly News features a unique story entitled 'Linux Accessibility — What is it and Why Does It Matter?' The article was written by Robert Cole, a blind person with a computer science degree. Mr Cole points out that Linux offers an excellent set of free tools for seeing-impaired users. Putting together a similar set of tools on Windows would cost at least US$600, about double what a retail copy of Windows itself costs."
When you boot up an Ubuntu live CD or USB drive, press CTRL+S when you hear a drum sound. This will start the Orca screen reader, and you can either try Ubuntu using Orca or install Ubuntu with your eyes closed; it's entirely your choice. I was able to do a complete installation (including partitioning my drives) without having to look at my screen!
Didn't know about this option. I have to say that this is pretty cool.
Flexible bare-metal recovery for Linux/UNIX
...because the article is about accessibility tools for seeing-impaired users?
I used to work with a blind programmer. He is a Linux geek. Every year or two he tries the screen readers in Linux, and says they all suck compared to Jaws in Windows (including Orca).
So he does all his email, web browsing, etc in Windows, as well as as much programming as he can get away with. For him Linux has been relegated to a toy he plays with once in a while.
Beetle B.
And I'll add that this is important because, as a sighted developer who once worked on a website specifically intended for blind users, I know it's ridiculously easy to make really bad assumptions about what blind people want. That design with a list of options arranged to be read first is great for a front page, but gets really annoying after it's read on every page....
Sighted people suck.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Odd, being highly visually impared, I've found Windows to be much easier to work with than a Mac. Mind you, I'm not completely blind, so I don't know about how well the screen reader software is (though, in my experience, it isn't so bad). Also, without doing anything special, I can use the keyboard for almost everything in Windows. The only Mac user I know, who uses the keyboard for everything, had to do quite a lot of tweaking to set it up.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Next time you look at a CD check out the spindle hole. Around the edge on one side it is raised. It's hard to see but you can feel it. The raised ridge always goes down.
Anybody who isn't on welfare switched to OS X years ago.
Yep, even my blind aunt agrees. She thinks it's sad Apple ran out of cat names, and that Swahili was an odd choice, but "Ubuntu" is her new favourite OS.
Inserting the USB boot stick is quite easy for a Visually impaired person
Or rather, it's no more difficult for a visually impaired person. Even with two functioning eyeballs, it often takes three tries to fit the USB connector.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Cobol is one of the most audibly readable languages there is.
"multiply a by b giving c" sounds a lot better than "c equalsign a asterisk b semicolon".
If I were to vote for the language that is the hardest to understand when read out loud (whether by machine or human), my vote would not go to perl, but lisp. With perl, at least you have the option to make it somewhat readable. Good luck balancing lisp parentheses correctly.
Not to mention typical block comments (in most any language), where you risk hearing five minutes of "asterisk asterisk asterisk asterisk..."