Most suitable linux distro for a blind linux newbie?

[Larissa Naber]

Hi!

My friend Yasemin, who is blind, wants to give Linux a spin. Now I'm 
looking for a suiteable distro. Although I have plenty of Linux 
experience my knowledge concerning making linux work for ablind person 
is somewhat limited. As of now, I spectaculariy failed to make my 
emacspeak speak. Most of my own maschines are running either gentoo or 
slackware and I used Suse in the past.

I believe that a distro with a bsd like port system such as debian or 
gentoo is easiest to handle for a newbie. As gentoo tends to be a bit 
volatile, I probably would rather pick a debian stable release. Anybody 
out there using debian?

We allready tried a Suse (which refused to recognize the braille 
terminal, a baum vario 40) and a oralux (which just would not talk on 
her machine - I guess I'll have to put in a different sound card, 
probably some windows only onboard chip)

It is not necessary that she'll be able to install the maschine all by 
herlf (at least not yet).

Please let me know what you are using, and why you are using it.

Greetings

Larissa