Petition on more accessible installations [was Re: Installation of Redhat without a sighted assistance

["Leonard R. Kasday" <kasday acm org>]

Re Victor's suggestion to contact Redhat to make their installation more
accessible to their blind customers.

I think a friendly request to Redhat--and other companies--would be a great
idea.  I think it would be good to have it signed by a number of
organizations.  For example, 

signed by "blinux-l" as an informal organization (Hans- could you be the
one to sign on behalf of blinux")

People on this list from other organizations could perhaps get signin
there.  For example, the Institute on Disabilities/UAP at Temple where
Victor and I are at.


Len


At 11:42 PM 7/4/99 -0700, Victor Tsaran wrote:
>Hello, listers!
>Has anyone tried to contact Redhat concerning making their installation more
>accessible to the blind? At this point the only way I can see is in using
>the kickstart script. However, in a couple of cases I have seen it doesn't
>exactly follow the logic of what is outlined in the README file that
>accompanies the utility. Microsoft WIndows, for a long time already, allowed
>its users to install itself with just a similar script. (Although it was
>rarely documented). Redhat went quite ahead with their  kickstart procedure,
>which might prove to be useful. However, there are two problems:
>1. Users with little knowledge of Linux and how the process of
>repartitioning works can be easily disoriented. If the script is
>badly-constructed or Redhat is confused about something, it will just stop
>and ask you certain questions, which is of no use to the blind. So,
>certainly, a more context-sensitive help would be needed here.
>2. The structure of Redhat installation, as I understand it, doesn't allow
>blind users to get speech output before installation is finished. Kirk with
>his Speakup has a very nice idea of compiling speech into kernel. Do you
>think it would be possible to make this a standart on all Linux
>distributions? Say, they would include a kernel with precompiled speech and,
>of course, the speech patch would incorporate some automation routines to
>detect a speech synth.
>
>Should we start perhaps bugging Redhat and others? Can we? Is it fair?
>Let me know what you think.
>Victor
>
>
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-------
Leonard R. Kasday, Ph.D.
Universal Design Engineer, Institute on Disabilities/UAP, and
Adjunct Professor, Electrical Engineering
Temple University

Ritter Hall Annex, Room 423, Philadelphia, PA 19122
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