[Hudlug] lug meeting

[Ben Fowler]

On 2/6/06, MICHAEL WEAVER <michaelweaver1 at btinternet.com> wrote:
> I am pleased that Hud Lug does know that Linux can be used with speech
> access hence the demonstration of Oralux and answers to my questions.
> I think, though, Linux in general needs to do lots more work for the Blind
> community ...

Do you mean that there are projects that are simply missing, that is,
there are commercial products which have no matching Open Source
counterparts. Or do you mean that the crop of assistive projects are
individually or collectively progressing too slowly. If the latter, do
you (or anyone from the blind 'community') have an opinion on which is
is most severe sticking point or bottleneck.

Assume that it is possible that "Linux in general" will do lots more
work for the Blind community, where should we direct our efforts and
how should we set about it.

> ... to give more of an alternative to Windows in the area of software
> speech because it has only been recently that Speakup has been given the
> ability to support software synths despite the fact I think that hardware
> synths are near to or impossible to purchase in the UK and Braille displays
> are quite costly.

Would it be a good idea to put some of this info on the wiki? Whilst I
was aware that a full Braille display is extremely expensive, I have
little knowledge as to when one would choose such a device, and how
one would decide whether to use Braille or text to speech. Note that
text to speech is useful to the sighted (it is like listening to the
Test Match commentary on the wireless whilst having the game on on a
television set) but like "alt=" tags on the web, such use must
sometimes take second place to the use of text to speech in its
assistive role.

> I also think the range of supported applications needs expanding as most
> work seems to be concentrated on Internet browsing which in one sense is no
> bad thing but it does neglect work on other applications ie Gnucash.

Gnucash is not that marvellous for the sighted, either!

> Hopefully the future ability of Gnopernicus to support both Gnome and KDE
> may help push things as I have read on a mailinglist that Gnopernicus may be
> being developed to run in both graphical desktops which may expand the
> number of applications it will speak.

See http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/richb?entry=my_first_blind_email

(I have added the meeting dates for the rest of the year to our wiki).

Ben

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Ben Fowler" <ben.the.mole at gmail.com>
> To: "HudLUG - Huddersfield Linux User Group" <hudlug at mailman.lug.org.uk>
> Sent: Monday, February 06, 2006 3:18 PM
> Subject: Re: [Hudlug] lug meeting
>
>
> On 1/24/06, Paul Brook <paul at codesourcery.com> wrote:
> > On Monday 16 January 2006 17:59, MICHAEL WEAVER wrote:
> > > Hi!
> > > Does anyone know if there will be a meeting next month?
> >
> > Sorry about that. With Hindsight we should have officially cancelled the
> > meeting.
> >
> > The next meeting is Monday 6th Feb. I should be there.
>
> Yes, and I will be coming to it, as well.
>
> Michael, do you think that Linux in general and Hudlug in particular
> does enough for, or is frinedly towards the visually impaired?
>
> Something which we ought to do over the course of the next year is to
> list and evaluate software and techniques available in Open Source
> software specifically intended for people with a handicap of some
> kind.
>
> I do know that SuSE used to come with an installer that could be used
> by a blind person, and emacs, (as one might anticipate) has a complete
> audio desktop exempli gratia http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/ .
>
> Do you think that this idea is a good one?
>
> In theory one might expect that source available software would be a
> natural fit for assistive technologies, but I am fairly sure that
> vendors strongly prefer closed source platforms for the reason that
> their margins will be a lot larger. This is obviously a disappointing
> state of affairs even if not a cause for concern.
>
> I am sorry if you had a wasted trip last month, which I suppose
> answers my question as to whether you value Hudlug, but today's
> meeting will be taking place as planned.
>
> I will put a list of dates in the Wiki.
>
> Incidentally, the IEEE, Digital South Yorkshire and/or Yorkshire
> Forward are keen to have a central or aggregated calendar for
> significant LUG events and until recently a gentleman at WYLUG used to
> do this.
>
> Ben