[1360] in linux-announce channel archive
WANTED: Braille/speech for X - interested?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Lars Wirzenius)
Sat Nov 25 20:30:27 1995
Date: Sat, 25 Nov 1995 17:34:11 +0200
From: Lars Wirzenius <wirzeniu@cc.helsinki.fi>
To: linux-announce@vger.rutgers.edu
From: Nikhil Nair <nn201@cus.cam.ac.uk>
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.announce
Subject: WANTED: Braille/speech for X - interested?
Followup-to: comp.os.linux.misc
Organization: University of Cambridge, England
Approved: linux-announce@news.ornl.gov (Lars Wirzenius)
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[ Moderator's note: I already posted this once, but to the wrong newsgroup. :-(
My apologies. --liw ]
As the maintainer of BRLTTY, a program which gives blind Linux users
access to the console via a soft Braille display, I have been approached
by a small company based in England who are involved in the production of
X-terminals for banks etc. They have adapted their terminals, which run
on Linux-based PCs, to include magnification, zoom etc. to help
partially-sighted users, and are exploring the possibilities of adding
Braille and synthetic speech support.
Such a development involves some far from inconsiderable problems from the
point of view of the developer: while magnification is obviously graphics
based, Braille or speech support means storing information about the text
displayed, rather than just the pixel-patterns, which are of little use.
The first question, then, must be `is there a market?'
Since these X-terminals run on Linux, they have already been `ported' to
Linux, so do allow use of Xfree86 on such a system. The implications of
this would be that blind users, for the first time, would have direct
access to a system running X.
While, of course, this would be a commercial venture, the company
concerned are also considering releasing some of their work as free
software. Either way, though, they need to know that there is sufficient
interest to make the project viable - and that's where this announcement
fits in. If you're interested, don't just keep quiet and hope something
will happen - tell them! If you send email to me (nn201@cus.cam.ac.uk),
I'll make sure they receive your comments. Hopefully, we'll be able to
convince them that this is worth doing.
To a bright future for equal access and opportunities!,
Nikhil.
- - --
Nikhil Nair
Trinity College Cambridge, England
Email: nn201@cus.cam.ac.uk
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