Solaris 10 released, with accessibility built-in! Also FreeTTS 1.2 released. (fwd)
Peter Korn
Peter.Korn at Sun.COM
Fri Feb 25 19:55:15 UTC 2005
Hi Michael,
I am from Sun, so I don't qualify as the "non-Sun" person you are seeking. I
also am sighted, so perhaps don't qualify as a sufficient authority by that
measure. However, I may have some useful information, so I'll chime in...
> Michael Malver writes:
>>One of the things I like about speakup is the ability to install the os
>>myself. I am totally blind, and own a dectalk. I know nothing of Solaris,
>>but would be greatly indebted to anyone who could do a realistic evaluation
>>of how "accessible" this is. The press release looks great, but most people
>>I know who have used Linux say the x-windows access with screen reading
>>isn't ready for common use. Has sun created something in terms of screen
>>reading beyond what is available in Linux??
>>I'd love to install the os, but want a person who doesn't work for sun to
>>evaluate the usefulness of the accessibility features from the perspective
>>of a totally blind person.
>>Michael
>>p.s. I truly hope it doesn't appear I'm flaming the wonderful work on access
>>sun is doing. I'm simply concerned as to how usable this is before I invest
>>limited time.
The priority for our first release, as informed by the letter of the rules in
Section 508, was a usable, accessible desktop for end-users. This
specifically meant that for the first release, accessible installation was a
"nice to have", not a "must have". Solaris, unlike Linux, doesn't have a
notion of virtual text consoles in which you can run Speakup or BrlTTY. You
can run BrlTTY on Solaris (we have been shipping them on the Solaris Companion
CD for a little while now), but it doesn't run at as low a level in Solaris as
they do in Linux. See http://blogs.sun.com/roller/search/richb?q=Companion&c=
for a blog entry from Rich Burridge on the contents of the Solaris Companion CD.
GUI accessibility in Solaris 10 is very likely better than what most folks in
the community have experienced. This isn't because we've "held stuff back",
or "added secret sauce". Rather it is becaus there are a *lot* of components
to put together to make this all work, and we've been building and testing the
particular collection of versions for a while now in both Solaris and our
upcoming Java Desktop System release 3 for Linux. Many of the problems folks
have encountered are due in part to older, or mis-matched versions of things.
Web browsing in particular is significant better using the Sun Mozilla
branch (we've gotten about half of our accessibility patches put back to
Mozilla trunk, with more going in every week; but the most accessible Mozilla
on UNIX remains our branch, which is what we ship in Solaris 10).
So Solaris 10 is probably "beyond what is available in Linux" from the point
of view of what most people have put together in Linux. But strictly
speaking, *everything* we've done in Solaris 10 is "available" in Linux - you
just have to do a bunch of work to put it together (and of course, that work
is part of the value of going to a commercial, supported, UNIX distro and why
many folks will pay Sun $50 for the retail edition of the Sun Java Desktop
System).
But... I wouldn't say that the shipping Solaris 10 is dramatically beyond what
many have experienced on their own with Linux. Perhaps others will disagree -
I've spent very little time trying to roll my own stuff on top of Debian or
Fedora or what-have-you. Even so, this is a *first* release. Compared to
outSPOKEN 1.0, or JAWS 1.0, I think this is far superior, and far more
functional. And I personally know a number of folks who were pretty
successful with outSPOKEN 1.0 (and especially outSPOKEN 1.1). And certainly
compared to the built-in GUI access options on Windows, there is no question
as to how much more functional Solaris 10 is. But we certainly have a good
distance to go before we can rival JAWS 5.x, or ZoomText 8.x, or... And a
user who is very comfortable and productive in the Linux console will probably
find they prefer that environment - at least for many/most things. One
blind user data-point to counter that: someone on one of the GNOME
accessibility mailing lists said he has moved over to Gnopernicus and Mozilla
exclusively for web browsing now, and no longer uses lynx. As they say, your
mileage may vary...
Janina Sajka wrote:
> I wonder if the new, "open," license of Solaris will now allow us to put
> Speakup and/or Brltty into the Solaris kernel? That would certainly lead
> the way to an accessible installation for blind users. As you point out,
> Michael, that's a critical componant for community acceptance.
This - or something like it - would be great! High availability is one of
Solaris' key value propositions, so getting things into the kernel will
involve much discussion with the opensolaris team (though what you do with
your own build is of course up to you!). I've cc-ed Rich Burridge, who did
the work to get BrlTTY onto the Solaris Companion CD, and who may have
insights into this issue.
Regards,
Peter Korn
Sun Accessibility team
P.S. please cc- me on this thread; I'm not on the mailing list.
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