Screen Readers for GNOME and KDE?

mingthemerciless asks: "The company I work for is developing accessible solutions for the visually impaired. Right now we are working on (yet another?)a screen reader for windows, but a linux version is on the drawing board...Linux screen readers like Speakup and Emacspeak either are console only or create virtual desktops. Is it viable to have a 'what you hear is what is on the screen' screenreader like JAWS on the current Linux desktop environments Like GNOME 2.0 or KDE 3.0?"

ask people in the know

[imr]

that is here:
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They know what theyre writing about. They have a great linux knowledge. And also a great friendliness toward users, wether newbies or experienced. You will find a lot more insightfull comments about such a subject over there.

hmm

[fault0]

I'm not exactly well versed in this subject, but GNOME2 has the ATK [gnome.org] (Accessible Toolkit), as well as the GAP [gnome.org] (Gnome Accessiblity Project). I'm not sure if screenreader's exist, but the accessiblity project would be a good place to start looking.

Sun won [gnomedesktop.org] the Helen Keller Achievement Award in Technology this year from American Foundation for the Blind for their work in GNOME, so I'm sure they are doing something right :-)

In KDE, unfortunatly, doesn't have that involved accessiblity support (yet). There probably won't be much without a real accessiblity toolkit support (either in Qt or in top of it). Check the kde-accessiblity [kde.org] mailing list if anyone is working on it, but last time I checked, nobody was. The accessiblity.kde.org page seems to be down :(

Gnopernicus

[Bistronaut]

The Gnome project seems to be doing a good job for the blind. See the Gnome Accessibility project [gnome.org] and specifically Gnopernicus [www.baum.ro].

Searches for KDE stuff only turned up the KDE Accessibility mailing list [kde.org]. Supposedly the new version of Qt (and by extention, KDE) has a good accessibility framework, but some more digging would be required to find out just what applications (if any) use it.

Text to Speech is a Cludge

[gmhowell]

The CLI is far more efficient for blind users. Particularly those with hearing loss. Learning the one system (a Braille TTY) allows the blind person to read, and insures it won't have to be learned at a later date if the hearing should go. The first point isn't specious; there are studies showing that text to speech 'solutions' are leading to a lack of reading ability amongst the blind. They more or less prove that listening to a book on tape is not the same as reading it, whether in type or in Braille.

All that said, I wish you luck. And let me add a caveat: good luck getting the project adopted. In my experience, government agencies aren't interested in anything but Windows. Whatever you come up with will have to be able to be set up by the end user or some helpful geek.

Re:Thinking the commandline does all is a kludge

[Bastian]

There are certainly times when one would want a non-CLI interface even if one were blind - for example, when using programs that are not (and should not) be for the console, such as word processors. Same for come web browsers - to the best of my knowledge, there is not and probably will never be a console web browser that supports major plugins or Java.

Besides, the trend is for allmost all applications, even on linux, to end up being for a window system. The trend is going to keep moving in that direction.

Re:Thinking the commandline does all is a kludge

[AvitarX]

What is a blind person going to get from macromedia (The majorest plugin?) or even java? And what is wrong with an old console based wordprossessor (Like an old DOS one). I doubt that a blind person would benifit too much from higher level formatting. If I turn off images in a web browser and read the text, it is no different to me then using links and reading the text.

I will agree with the comment someone made about the braile console output, I would imagine it is much quicker then listining to a voice.

So really it comes down to your last point, which is the kicker. If a blind person is going to interoperate with word 2006 they probably better be able to use abiword, or star office, or office. And not starwrite.

Really what blind people need (in my probably totally wrong opinion, I am not blind, nor do I know anyone who is) is a good remake of a console word prossessor, with some type of MS word importing and exporting functionality. A web browser that can play sound files but is console based and other console based apps with key binding for menues.

All these apps could be in there own virtual terminal and would really be indistinguishable from a window environment if you couldn't see where they were. If the project was done well, people of less means could also use it to get modern compatibility in their wordprossessing.

Also, console does not automatically mean CLI. dpkg-configure has a very nice diolog box interface, as did the old word prossessors.

(shame on me not looking up prossessor)

Re:Thinking the commandline does all is a kludge

[gmhowell]

For the sighted, there are major gains to be realized from GUI apps. But you do trade off functionality.

Even before losing her eyesight, my wife preferred text terminals to GUIs. She almost had a conniption when her Dos 6.2 partition died on her computer. The total upside is that she doesn't need to 'unlearn' the GUI tools.

If the parent poster is still reading, I always liked WordPerfect for DOS. With a multi-line braille terminal, you can have an editing line and a status line. What more do you need? Sounds like a perfect environment for VIM.

Nobody has discussed the privacy factor either. Perhaps my wife (or some random blind person) doesn't want the world to know she is browsing the Barney website (or whatever she browses). Text-to-speech prevents that. Hell, with a Braille TTY, I can't even look over her shoulder and see what she's doing. (Upside is she can't look over my shoulder and see me looking at pr0n).

I think you are on the mark in what you suggest for blind people. I believe links, lynx, w3m, and a few others support the functionality you mention. All you have to do is assign some sound player to handle .wav files and whatnot. It's not unlike choosing helper apps for Mozilla and others. Like I said, I'm a fan of WP5.2. Think we still have a copy around here. Will probably try to run it from one of the command line DOS emulators for Linux.

On the last thing: I'm no zealot. I'm typing this from a Win2k machine. But the command line for Linux is far superior to that in any current version of DOS/Windows.

Re:Thinking the commandline does all is a kludge

[alfaiomega]

There are certainly times when one would want a non-CLI interface even if one were blind - for example, when using programs that are not (and should not) be for the console, such as word processors.

You mean the WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) word processors? (I hope it's not some stupid joke.) "The best output a blind person using WYSIWYG software can hope for is getting no output at all" as the anonymous geek quoted on BLinux FAQ [leb.net] has said. There are typesetting (or "word processing") tools working perfectly well in any text editor you have. I personally use Donald Knuth's TeX [tug.org] and Leslie Lamport's LaTeX [latex-project.org] extention because they are more powerful than any WYSIWYG tool I've ever used (including TeXmacs [texmacs.org]), while also giving me much better looking results. They're not only more powerful for people with good sight like myself, they can also be used from any text editor a blind person can use, like the Emacspeak [sourceforge.net] for example. That's if a blind person ever needs such a tool, like for writing a book or printed article. Because using word processors for communication (like most of people use Microsoft Word these days) instead of plain text email is stupid at least.

How sad...

[Roadmaster]

to see that being blind is, indeed, a quite expensive proposition. JAWS, the screen-reading software mentioned by the submitter, costs US $895. Even the timed evaluation version is $39.95. This sucks; the software needed to access a computer when being blind costs as much as the computer itself, and i'm not even counting a braille keyboard or display.

Re:How sad...

[The Analog Kid]

Yeah, that does suck, paying for an evaluation, I can see that for a new hyped-up operating system, but not for something like this. Of all the ways you can take advantage of someone, you have to pick the visually impaired. Well that's capitalism and/or people not fighting against an outrageous price, I don't care how sophisticated the software is, for what it is it doesn't add up, its not some 3D modeling program like Maya, or 3D Max, its a visiually imapaired aid.

Re:How sad...

[cooldev]

Or it could be that development cost is $X, and the number of people they expect to purchase the software is Y, and X/Y=$850*

Do you people really not understand how products get made?

I do hope that there is some subsidy for blind users purchasing this sort of software that couldn't otherwise afford it, but to think the people making and selling this software are taking advantage of blind people is an accusation bordering on libel.

In case you haven't noticed, wheelchairs, hearing aids, and all sorts of similar products are expensive, too.

And BTW, while it's one of the better ones, JAWS isn't the only screen reader out there. Windows even comes with Narrator, which while very basic could hold some users over for a while. (It also helps normal developers verify that their software is accessible to blind users.)

*-Wait, come to think of it, that's why high end 3D software is also priced so high.

Blind + Linux = BLINUX

[alfaiomega]

Blind + Linux = BLINUX [leb.net]
"The purpose of BLINUX project is to improve usability of the LINUX operating system for the user who is blind"

After searching Google for blind linux [google.com], I found BLINUX as the first result, I'm surprised no one has suggested it yet. There's probably everything one should know trying to set up a Linux box for blind users.

As for the text mode vs. GUI, let me quote BLINUX FAQ [leb.net], emphasis is mine:

5.4 X Window Support

5.4.1 Q: Is anyone working on X-Windows screen reading capability?

A: Yes. Don't hold your breath, though. Much of the X stuff will never work well this way. There has been some discussion here of the superior possibilities for the new Gnome desktop (see the archives for details). The really important thing to understand, is that you have very little reason to be concerned about the GUI stuff, because of the rich functionality available in text mode. Also, Brian Selden is working on porting Ultrasonix to Linux. Ultrasonix is a screen access package for X that was originally developed for Sun SPARCstations running Solaris; see http://www.henge.com/~brian/ultralin.html [henge.com] for info.

This is basically what I thought, but I searched the FAQ to make sure how the most interested people feel about it.

Proklam

[Rob Kaper]

Proklam is a speech architecture for KDE. It is still under development and I have no idea what the progress is, but you can find it in the kdenonbeta CVS module (instructions [kde.org]) of the project.

"Proklam is a desktop service that will allow KDE applications (and other applications) to use speech synthetisers using a dcop interface."

The README file of the project has contact information, in case you'd like to get in touch with the developer.