[Hudlug] gnopernicus problem

[Ben Fowler]

On 19/06/06, MICHAEL WEAVER <michaelweaver1 at btinternet.com> wrote:
> Hi!

These are all excelent points.

> I think I may be able to work out why you have doubts about Totally Blind
> people using GUI in Linux.
> I suppose the same was thought about Windows until computer users went from
> DOS to Windows.

... Michael, I agree you with 100% and in any conflict between our
views, would favour yours over mine. I have read in may places that
the visually handicapped found moving from DOS to Windows a step
backwards. (It was for the sighted as well, on simple usablilty
grounds). Either I am picking up and extrapolating from a too small
sample, or there are more opinions on this than just black-and-white
(DOD vs Windows; CLI vs GUI), or I need other factors into account.

> Until I used HAL at RNC in Hereford and at home Jaws and now Windoweyes, I
> pretty much came from a #DOS environment where everything was command line
> based.

Some people say (whilst finding that JAWS is a solution that they can
live with) it is faut de mieux, and merely making the best of the bad
job that is Windows accessibility. (Note, it is possible that recent
versions of Windows are or will become much better in this respect)

> Although in theory having a knowledge of commands in DOS which have slight
> differences in Linux, the main problem with command line stuff is the
> limited options I have for screenreaders if I am going to stick with Ubuntu
> because there are only Emacspeak and Speakup, the latter which hasn't yet
> been packaged for Ubuntu for it to be patched into the system.
> As Emacspeak is the only real option, the problem is emacs and Emacspeak are
> not the easiest thing for a newby to learn despite my knowledge of DOS
> commands and I reckon I would probably need to constantly look at the Emacs
> and Emacspeak documentation for every task I wanted to achieve.
> There are talking Linux distros ie Oralux and even GRML which do use Speakup
> but I am not sure if they can be made to run as other than live distros. The
> latest version of Oralux now seems to support software speech and from
> testing it on my desktop I did manage to get GRML to speak which is slightly
> tricky as you have to count before typing the commands for software speech
> when the PC boots and I am not sure of what GRMl would have given me access
> to as I hadn't yet worked out the Speakup commands.

There is a lot of stuff there, and it reads, as does most material
typed by a blind person, as though you had typed it into an interface
one line high.

It is part of my credo that DOS should not be regarded as a pattern or
stepping stone to a shell like bash or emacs. If anything, DOS is a
cut down and poorly functional bad copy of programs such as the
original sh, and is best buried and forgotten.

Although one can say many things about emacs, "limited options" is not
the first to spring to mind.

If you find that you have to reject Oralux and Emacspeak on the
grounds that you have had a look at them and would prefer something
else, that is fine. We will concentrate on things that you are happy
with. If you think of this as seed and soil then I am quite prepared
to accept your feelings that the Emacspeak and Oralux seeds are not
going to grow and flower in the soil we find in HUDLUG.

Ben


> > On 17/06/06, MICHAEL WEAVER <michaelweaver1 at btinternet.com> wrote:
> >> ... a sound card problem may be the reason why I am having problems
> >> with Gnopernicus starting in Dapper on my laptop [ snip ]
> >
> > Yes. At first glance it does seem relevant. I will see if I can follow
> > along with the work that that page is about; and we need to check it
> > the next time we meet - the next meeting is in two weeks time, July
> > the 3rd.
> >
> > As you know, I have my doubts about a totally blind person using a GUI
> > at all, though it is obviously valuable for you to try out Gnome and
> > gnopernicus; but fixing this problem could make all the difference.