An Accessibility spin of Silverblue, with the best experience possible?
discussion.fedoraproject.org
I read this discussion thread but it was closed pretty soon. I read @vpolasek 's post on daily use of Desktop Linux as a blind person and found it really interesting. There was the idea of a spin, which I think fits it. Why should blind people use a sighted Desktop with a screenreader? This makes no sense to me. I am really curious and think this is essential, it should be a very high top priority. Blind people will probably have very different needs, and I am would love to discuss what the b...

Accessibility is a really important field. Everyone should have the right to use a free and friendly Operating System.

But its a pretty nieche topic, and I also think current ways of implementing it are not perfect.

I created a Thread on Fedora Discussion (Link) but Lemmy is way more active so I would love to spread attention to this topic, and collect your ideas.

  • How should a blind Desktop be structured?
  • Are there any big dealbreakers like Wayland, TTS engines, specific applications e.g.?
  • What do you think would be the best base Desktop to build such a setup on?
  • Would you think an immutable, out of the box Distro like “Fedora Silversound”, with everything included, the best tools, presets, easy setup e.g. is a good idea?
  • How privacy-friendly can a usable blind Desktop be?

Also, how would you like to call it? “A Talking Desktop”?

I am excited for your comments!

  • @rrobin
    9•1 year ago

    I’m a bit of terminal nerd, so probably not the best person to talk about desktop. I don’t have many thoughts with regards to app development or layout for accessibility. What I really would like is for distros to be accessible from the ground up, even before the desktop is up.

    The best example of accessibility from the ground up I saw for linux was talking arch, an Arch Linux spin with speech. Sadly the website is gone, but we can find it in the web archive

    in particular there was an audio tutorial to help you install the live cd (you can still ear it in the archive):

    Here are a few resources, which are pretty dated but I wish they were the norm in any install:

    Now going into your points:

    How should a blind Desktop be structured?

    To be honest I don’t expect much here. As long as context/window switching signals you properly you are probably fine. I have not used gnome with orca in a long time, but this used to be ok. The problems begin with the apps, tabs and app internal structure.

    Are there any big dealbreakers like Wayland, TTS engines, specific applications e.g.?

    Lots.

    Some times your screen reader breaks and its nice to have a magic key that restarts the screen reader, or the entire desktop. Or you just swap into a virtual console running speakup/yasr and do it yourself :D

    TTS engines are probably ok. Some times people complain about the voices, but I think it is fine as long as it reliably works, does not hang, responds quickly.

    Specific applications are tricky. The default settings on a lot of apps wont work well by default, but that is not surprising.

    I do think that a lot of newer apps have two problems

    1. they are not configurable or scriptable at all, there is only one way to do things and no way to customize it. Opening tickets to patch each and every feature is not feasible.
    2. They frequently go through breaking release cycles that nuke old features, so you need to relearn all your tricks on the next major release and find new hacks

    I can give you two good-ish examples, both Vim and Mutt can work very well with a terminal screen reader, but it is a lot of work to configure:

    • with vim you need to disable all features that make the cursor jump around and draw stuff (like line numbers and the ruler)
    • with mutt every single string in the screen can be customized, so you even insert SSML to control speech and read email

    I think you can find similar examples in desktop apps too.

    What do you think would be the best base Desktop to build such a setup on?

    no idea to be honest. Gnome use to have support. I suppose other desktops that can be remote controlled could be changed to integrate speech (like i3 or sway).

    Would you think an immutable, out of the box Distro like “Fedora Silversound”, with everything included, the best tools, presets, easy setup e.g. is a good idea?

    I have never used Silversound. But the key thing for me is to be able to roll back forward to a working state.

    How privacy-friendly can a usable blind Desktop be?

    I think it should be fine. People with screens have things like those Laptop Screen Privacy Filter, people using audio have headphones. Depending on your machine you can setup the mixer so that audio never uses the external speaker.

    I don’t recall the details but you can also have some applications send audio to the external speaker while others use your headphones (provided they are a separate sound card, like usb/bluetooth headphones).

    Also, how would you like to call it? “A Talking Desktop”?

    Urgh, Shouting Linux.

    • @[email protected]OP
      3•1 year ago

      Thanks for your experience!

      So you would say terminal and text based is best.

      This could be done rather easily, in comparison to a fancy desktop. Like this:

      # start OS, login, terminal emulator opens
# terminal is always accessible when pressing 1 or something

> apps
Office
Web
Video
Audio
Games

> Office
Writer
Calc
...

> writer
# opens writer in a new desktop, fullscreen. Switches to the app and says its name

> 1
# switch back to terminal

> time
It is 12:53

> date
#...

      And so on. This would be pretty nice! Flatpaks would be somewhat of a problem, one would need a script to alias the names to their short names, I did that and I think it works well, but still a bit specific.

      Repo

      Haha maybe window managers are the next big thing for accessibility?