Re: Accessibility issues of GUI interface in Linux

[Hans Zoebelein <hzo goldfish cube net>]

Some annotations:

Redhat probably could add the emacspeak package (if they don't do this).
But they probably won't add Mbrola/Festival with voices, because
for this, they would need an extra CD-ROM. 

But the problem isn't Redhat not adding the 450k emacspeak package.
The problem is, that there are not enough expert coders who are blind and
who can/are willing to write blind support software. 

I have the impression that people who are writing code to enhance
usability for the user who is blind, don't get enough feed back from the
blind community. Therefore project development is slow or even dies down.

Only very few from the blind community are thinking how to improve the
existing speech servers as there are (in alphabetical order)

festival
freespeech
emacspeak server
mbrola
rsynth
speak
speakup
speechd
Ultrasonix

Sorry if I missed a project. There are enough starting points. 
But what's IMHO missing amnong computer users who are blind is a broader
expert knowlegde and the will to improve the current status. 

Everybody is waiting until a broiled turkey is flying into his/her mouth
(which only happens in Neverland). Therefore you'll have to eat ugly
plastic food or food which is not done completely.

The blind community should support the development of good software by
trying out the stuff which is available, contacting the authors, saying
what they would like and what they don't. Looking into the sources
and supplying patches (if you know how to code). 

Other programmers will eventually provide hooks for blind support software
under Linux. But how should they test and improve their stuff, when there
is no feedback?

Discussions like this one are a waste of time and energy as long as there
are no results which help to change the status how it is now. 
The only thing such a discussion can do is to make it clear that the 
current state is pretty unsatisfactory and that there is still a long way
to go.  

--Hans