RE: How's Karmic these days?
Hello I know that this is already old news but perhaps to keep it all in perspective, I have started to use 9.04 recently and impressed by the progress since 8.10 which I used before. OK it did not work for me out of the box (using wubi) but with a number of simple configurations everything is well and speech is responsive and reasonably reliable. The reality is that accessibility in the big world is not a priority if we like it or not; I am personally happy to wait for the new version of the distro to settle down - 9.04 is probably the first distro where I feel that I can do some real work with (not using the command line which I used in the good old days and do not wish to use but for backup and some admin tasks again). On a related point in reply to the previous message, Vinux has its place especially for new users where everything is pre configured and in my small way I fully support what Tony is doing. At the same time there is a place for Main distro which are ideally accessible out of the box or with minimal configuration where perhaps more settings are required but one can take advantage of the latest technology and what the main stream are using. Thanks to Luke, Will, Tony and all others including those who are happy to be at the bleeding edge who contribute to accessible technology. Regards Isaac -Original Message- From: ubuntu-accessibility-boun...@lists.ubuntu.com [mailto:ubuntu-accessibility-boun...@lists.ubuntu.com] On Behalf Of Anthony Sales Sent: 22 October 2009 20:13 To: Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com Subject: RE: How's Karmic these days? Hi everyone, I think everyone appreciates what Willie and Luke are doing, without them LInux would be a whole lot less accessible and they are doing a great job in the circumstances. However they are up against the same problem as every other VI user, in that although companies acknowledge the need for accessibility it isn't very high on their priorities list and this is reflected on the fact that Luke and Willie seem to be the only people who are allowed to work on these projects by their employers. If they were serious their would be a team of people working on accessibility, and it wouldn't be an afterthought but a fundamental element of all applications. The reality is that the VI are but one minority group amongst many, they aren't a big enough user group to generate billions of dollars, and thus they are catered for by smaller companies who can charge an arm and a leg for software many people can't survive without. I think mainstream Linux accessibility will gradually g et better, but just like with Windows, it will always be an afterthought or add on, it is unlikely that any major distributer will produce a fully accessible OS optimised for the VI. This is why I started making Vinux, and I don't want to start any new arguments about mainstream v specialist accesibility software, but just imagine if Willie and Luke where actually working on an Orca distro rather than on the software itself, instead of trying to get it to work with Ubuntu's latest cutting edge technology. Then they would be able to make whatever changes were necessary to get the system fully accessible and include all the best accessible software. That is what I am trying to do with Vinux, but I simply don't have the technical skills and knowledge that Luke and Willie have, and like me they have to earn a living and it isn't likely to come from producing open-source accessibility software unless a government or large charity get involved. I still think it would be great if a ll of the developers interested in VI issues could pool their resources into one distro to rule them all, and this is not an attempt to devalue their work, what they are doing is great, but I sometimes feel that we are all swimming against the tide of the needs of the sighted majority and we are always going to be little fish. Keep up the good work, I am following in your wake, and without the work you do the Vinux project would not have been possible at all! drbongo ___ From: ubuntu-accessibility-boun...@lists.ubuntu.com [ubuntu-accessibility-boun...@lists.ubuntu.com] On Behalf Of Willie Walker [william.wal...@sun.com] Sent: 22 October 2009 19:26 To: Bill Cox Cc: ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com Subject: Re: How's Karmic these days? Hi All: From a stability standpoint, I can share what I'm planning for GNOME 2.30, which I suspect is likely to be what Lucid Lynx will be based upon. The main goal for GNOME 2.30 (which you'll see developed via the GNOME 2.29.x development releases) is that we're retooling the entire accessibility infrastructure to shed the Bonobo/CORBA dependency. This includes the AT-SPI infrastructure, speech, and magnification: http://live.gnome.org/Accessibility/BonoboDeprecation At the same time, we have some big technologies coming down the pipe that will need accessibility support: WebKit and GNOME Shell. GDM 2.28 als
Re: Start Orca automatically question
Hi, You can enabled orca by using assistive technologies preferences tool. From system menu select System > Perference > Assistive technologies. Cheers --arky Rakesh 'arky' Ambati| IT Consultant| http://www.braillewithoutborders.org | Blog: http://playingwithsid.blogspot.com --- On Fri, 23/10/09, René Linke wrote: > From: René Linke > Subject: Start Orca automatically question > To: "Mailing list of the Ubuntu Accessibility Team , , " > > Date: Friday, 23 October, 2009, 4:32 AM > Hi, > > I am a new member here and I have a first question: > I downloaded the latest Ubuntu for Netbooks Remix and > extracted the > image on a USB memory stick. What files I need to edit to > do start Orca > and change the user interface language to German > automatically? > > TIA > > -- > Best regards, > René > > -- > Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list > Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com > https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility > Keep up with people you care about with Yahoo! India Mail. Learn how. http://in.overview.mail.yahoo.com/connectmore -- Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
Re: karmic and voxin
Hi, my installation was done in the same way you did. However you need to edit the speech-dispatcher config file and remove the comment marker present in the line that load ibmtts module. As posted in my previous message, I had no luck with voxin and karmic. []S José Vilmar Estácio de Souza http://www.informal.com.br Msn:vil...@informal.com.br Skype:jvilmar Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/jvesouza Phone: +55 21-2555-2650 Cel: +55 21-8868-0859 On 10/22/2009 08:10 PM, Bill Cox wrote: > I'm trying to get voxin working in karmic beta x64 under VirtualBox. > I can get the 'say' program working without error. However, I've > failed so far to get it working with either speech-dispatcher or Gnome > Speech services. To install, I used the voxin-update-0.24 program. I > had to modify voxin-installer.sh to include 9.10 in a case statement, > but then the install runs. However, Orca does not show ibmtts as an > option when using SD, and it doesn't show IBM ViaVoice when using > Gnome Speech Services. What steps did you use to install Voxin? > > Also, I didn't have any luck removing pulseaudio. All it did was fry my > sound. > > Thanks, > Bill > > On Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 7:34 PM, jose vilmar estacio de souza > wrote: > >> I tried to run on my 64 bits installation without success. >> My machine froze completely. >> >> On 09/27/2009 08:22 PM, Luke Yelavich wrote: >> >>> On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 01:53:32AM EST, jose vilmar estacio de souza wrote: >>> >>> Anyone running voxin in karmic? >>> I tried running it last week for some testing, and it worked without issue >>> on i386. >>> >>> Luke >>> >>> >>> >> -- >> Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list >> Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com >> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility >> >> -- Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
Start Orca automatically question
Hi, I am a new member here and I have a first question: I downloaded the latest Ubuntu for Netbooks Remix and extracted the image on a USB memory stick. What files I need to edit to do start Orca and change the user interface language to German automatically? TIA -- Best regards, René -- Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
Re: karmic and voxin
Hello, Just to let you know that work will start on Voxin + karmic (32 / 64bits) this week end. Hopefully, the new release (0.25) will come before the end of October. Best regards, Gilles Bill Cox a écrit : > I'm trying to get voxin working in karmic beta x64 under VirtualBox. > I can get the 'say' program working without error. However, I've > failed so far to get it working with either speech-dispatcher or Gnome > Speech services. To install, I used the voxin-update-0.24 program. I > had to modify voxin-installer.sh to include 9.10 in a case statement, > but then the install runs. However, Orca does not show ibmtts as an > option when using SD, and it doesn't show IBM ViaVoice when using > Gnome Speech Services. What steps did you use to install Voxin? > > Also, I didn't have any luck removing pulseaudio. All it did was fry my > sound. > > Thanks, > Bill > > On Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 7:34 PM, jose vilmar estacio de souza > wrote: >> I tried to run on my 64 bits installation without success. >> My machine froze completely. >> >> On 09/27/2009 08:22 PM, Luke Yelavich wrote: >>> On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 01:53:32AM EST, jose vilmar estacio de souza wrote: >>> Anyone running voxin in karmic? >>> I tried running it last week for some testing, and it worked without issue >>> on i386. >>> >>> Luke >>> >>> >> -- >> Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list >> Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com >> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility >> > -- Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
Re: karmic and voxin
I'm trying to get voxin working in karmic beta x64 under VirtualBox. I can get the 'say' program working without error. However, I've failed so far to get it working with either speech-dispatcher or Gnome Speech services. To install, I used the voxin-update-0.24 program. I had to modify voxin-installer.sh to include 9.10 in a case statement, but then the install runs. However, Orca does not show ibmtts as an option when using SD, and it doesn't show IBM ViaVoice when using Gnome Speech Services. What steps did you use to install Voxin? Also, I didn't have any luck removing pulseaudio. All it did was fry my sound. Thanks, Bill On Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 7:34 PM, jose vilmar estacio de souza wrote: > I tried to run on my 64 bits installation without success. > My machine froze completely. > > On 09/27/2009 08:22 PM, Luke Yelavich wrote: >> On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 01:53:32AM EST, jose vilmar estacio de souza wrote: >> >>> Anyone running voxin in karmic? >>> >> I tried running it last week for some testing, and it worked without issue >> on i386. >> >> Luke >> >> > > -- > Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list > Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com > https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility > -- Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
Re: How's Karmic these days?
Hi, Maybe that I should add a few words for the pointer only users. (In the following, "pointer users" means users that are able to move the pointer in any direction, but that are not able to perform any input with a hardware keyboard.) a) For pointer users able to click, karmic provides a system that they can use out of the box. - GDM has been patched so that it starts onboard as the onscreen keyboard. (onboard is the onscreen keyboard shipping with ubuntu already for several releases) - Onboard is also available in the GNOME session and its desktop icons are in the Universal Access menu. However, this menu and the desktop icons are hidden on a default Ubuntu a installation; but it is possible to use the Main Menu control panel to make them appear. So, a default Ubuntu Karmic installation can be used by these users without help from anybody. b) For pointer users not able to click, karmic is also usable, but only after a person able to click has performed a few configurations needed by these users. Fortunately, Ubuntu (to be more precise, it is already shipped in GNOME) ships by default an accessibility tool called mousetweaks that allows these users to perform pointer clicks by software. - GDM is not accessible for pointer users that cannot click. A person with administrative privileges can set up GDM to launch mousetweaks in conjunction with onboard. Instructions about how to do it can be found in the Help of GDM. Remarks: -- I don't know whether Assistive Technology is running in GDM on a system out of the box. As mousetweaks requires Assistive Technology, GDM has to be configuration configuration configured to run it if it is not already the case. Instructions about how to do it can be found in the Help of GDM. -- These users must never deactivate the onscreen keyboard in GDM, because it will also deactivate dwelling and they will not be able to reactivate it without the help of another person. - The GNOME session is also not accessible for these people out of the box, but the solution is simple: Assistive Technology has to be activated for the GNOME session and the dwell click applet has to be installed on the GNOME panel. Once this has been done, the GNOME session becomes accessible also for pointer users that are not able to click. There is however a bug that has to be mentioned: In fact, there is an incompatibility between gksu and Assistive Technology. For example, if you open the Synaptic Package Manager, the gksu dialog for authentication appears. After entering the password, the desktop begins to become a bit irresponsive. To make the desktop fully responsive again, the user has to kill the gksu process in the dialog. To not get into this situation, a work around is to call the applications that use gksu directly from the terminal with sudo. (The authentication dialog of policykit does not have this problem.) Cheers Francesco Nolan Darilek wrote: > Anyone using it regularly? Lots of folks not using accessibility seem to > be having good luck with it, so I'm thinking of making the upgrade. How > is it from an accessibility perspective? And are there any more > potential audio breaking changes planned? > > Thanks. > -- Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
Re: How's Karmic these days?
I did a raw install of Ubuntu Karmic x64 Beta in VirutualBox, and here's the current status for such an installation. Note that I did a visual install, not an accessible install: The install has a nice slide show. One of the slides claimed Ubuntu was "one of the most accessible operating systems." I thought that was interesting. There were some goobers, but overall, the OS rocks for sighted users, even in Beta. It is easy to see why Ubuntu remains the popular Linux OS. Karmic is going to be a well received release. Orca ran out-of-the-box. However, speech got queued in Speech Dispatcher, and hitting escape or any other key did nothing to stop it. Even killing Orca did not stop it. You have to listen to every word Orca thinks is available to be read. This makes Orca completely unusable. I installed Gnome Speech Services, and switched to that, but it crashes the virtual machine. So basically, Karmic Beta is awesome for sighted users, but does not work out-of-the-box for blind/VI users. I'm going to try removing Pulse Audio. I'll let you know if I find any combo that works well with Orca. Bill -- Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
RE: How's Karmic these days?
Hi everyone, I think everyone appreciates what Willie and Luke are doing, without them LInux would be a whole lot less accessible and they are doing a great job in the circumstances. However they are up against the same problem as every other VI user, in that although companies acknowledge the need for accessibility it isn't very high on their priorities list and this is reflected on the fact that Luke and Willie seem to be the only people who are allowed to work on these projects by their employers. If they were serious their would be a team of people working on accessibility, and it wouldn't be an afterthought but a fundamental element of all applications. The reality is that the VI are but one minority group amongst many, they aren't a big enough user group to generate billions of dollars, and thus they are catered for by smaller companies who can charge an arm and a leg for software many people can't survive without. I think mainstream Linux accessibility will gradually get better, but just like with Windows, it will always be an afterthought or add on, it is unlikely that any major distributer will produce a fully accessible OS optimised for the VI. This is why I started making Vinux, and I don't want to start any new arguments about mainstream v specialist accesibility software, but just imagine if Willie and Luke where actually working on an Orca distro rather than on the software itself, instead of trying to get it to work with Ubuntu's latest cutting edge technology. Then they would be able to make whatever changes were necessary to get the system fully accessible and include all the best accessible software. That is what I am trying to do with Vinux, but I simply don't have the technical skills and knowledge that Luke and Willie have, and like me they have to earn a living and it isn't likely to come from producing open-source accessibility software unless a government or large charity get involved. I still think it would be great if all of the developers interested in VI issues could pool their resources into one distro to rule them all, and this is not an attempt to devalue their work, what they are doing is great, but I sometimes feel that we are all swimming against the tide of the needs of the sighted majority and we are always going to be little fish. Keep up the good work, I am following in your wake, and without the work you do the Vinux project would not have been possible at all! drbongo ___ From: ubuntu-accessibility-boun...@lists.ubuntu.com [ubuntu-accessibility-boun...@lists.ubuntu.com] On Behalf Of Willie Walker [william.wal...@sun.com] Sent: 22 October 2009 19:26 To: Bill Cox Cc: ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com Subject: Re: How's Karmic these days? Hi All: From a stability standpoint, I can share what I'm planning for GNOME 2.30, which I suspect is likely to be what Lucid Lynx will be based upon. The main goal for GNOME 2.30 (which you'll see developed via the GNOME 2.29.x development releases) is that we're retooling the entire accessibility infrastructure to shed the Bonobo/CORBA dependency. This includes the AT-SPI infrastructure, speech, and magnification: http://live.gnome.org/Accessibility/BonoboDeprecation At the same time, we have some big technologies coming down the pipe that will need accessibility support: WebKit and GNOME Shell. GDM 2.28 also has some accessibility issues that need addressing. It's a lot of work and we're going to do our best to make sure the changes are positive changes for GNOME 2.30. But, there will be instability for a period of time during the GNOME 2.29 development cycle. So...what this means is that I am going to keep Orca development down to a minimum during the 2.29.x/2.30 cycle. I plan only to fix high priority bugs in Orca and will work to make sure these bug fixes are backported to GNOME 2.28. For the near future, people needing stability should stick with GNOME 2.28 and Karmic. While Karmic may have some issues now, I think the users on this list need to get behind it, test it, and get constructive feedback and patches back to the Ubuntu team. BTW, I fully sympathize with Luke -- I've been doing a11y work for nearly 20 years and you are constantly between a rock and a hard place. Some of the users constantly spit and yell at you and your bosses keep stripping you down to barely enough to survive. The one thing that keeps you going are the successes of users where the difference between having the solution and not having the solution can mean having a job or not having a job, being able to communicate with others or not being able to communicate with others, etc. Will (GNOME Accessibility Lead) Bill Cox wrote: > Hi, Luke. > > Thanks for working on accessibility. I feel really rotten about > complaining about the bugs without putting in effort into debugging. > However, my boss is all over me at the moment to get another project > back on schedule.
Re: How's Karmic these days?
Hi All: From a stability standpoint, I can share what I'm planning for GNOME 2.30, which I suspect is likely to be what Lucid Lynx will be based upon. The main goal for GNOME 2.30 (which you'll see developed via the GNOME 2.29.x development releases) is that we're retooling the entire accessibility infrastructure to shed the Bonobo/CORBA dependency. This includes the AT-SPI infrastructure, speech, and magnification: http://live.gnome.org/Accessibility/BonoboDeprecation At the same time, we have some big technologies coming down the pipe that will need accessibility support: WebKit and GNOME Shell. GDM 2.28 also has some accessibility issues that need addressing. It's a lot of work and we're going to do our best to make sure the changes are positive changes for GNOME 2.30. But, there will be instability for a period of time during the GNOME 2.29 development cycle. So...what this means is that I am going to keep Orca development down to a minimum during the 2.29.x/2.30 cycle. I plan only to fix high priority bugs in Orca and will work to make sure these bug fixes are backported to GNOME 2.28. For the near future, people needing stability should stick with GNOME 2.28 and Karmic. While Karmic may have some issues now, I think the users on this list need to get behind it, test it, and get constructive feedback and patches back to the Ubuntu team. BTW, I fully sympathize with Luke -- I've been doing a11y work for nearly 20 years and you are constantly between a rock and a hard place. Some of the users constantly spit and yell at you and your bosses keep stripping you down to barely enough to survive. The one thing that keeps you going are the successes of users where the difference between having the solution and not having the solution can mean having a job or not having a job, being able to communicate with others or not being able to communicate with others, etc. Will (GNOME Accessibility Lead) Bill Cox wrote: > Hi, Luke. > > Thanks for working on accessibility. I feel really rotten about > complaining about the bugs without putting in effort into debugging. > However, my boss is all over me at the moment to get another project > back on schedule. I'm sure you know what that's like. > > However, over the next year, I promise to find some time to nail a bug > or two, like the crash in speech dispatcher. In the meantime, we > should probably set expectations for users, and let them know it will > be a while before Orca is working in a stable manner in the latest > Ubuntu. It's an unfortunate situation, but blind users are simply not > able to chip in and fix things when accessibility is broken, so it > will be up to the very few of us interested in accessibility who still > have decent vision to pull it off. > > Best regards, > Bill > > On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 5:59 PM, Luke Yelavich wrote: >> On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 08:46:26AM EST, Bill Cox wrote: >>> Sorry guys, I know there's some of you out there who actually work on >>> Ubuntu accessibility, but the current state sucks. I certainly hope >>> Ubuntu decides at some point to make accessibility a priority. >> I can understand why, as a user, you feel that way. Unfortunately I am the >> only one so far as I know of, actively working on improving Ubuntu's >> accessibility, and while I do as much as I can to make things work as well >> as they can, I have other matters that I need to attend to, due to working >> for Canonical and being responsible for other parts of the desktop as well, >> so I can only do so much in the time I allocate for accessibility work. >> >> Unfortunately the speech-dispatcher crasher is at the moment, somewhat >> beyond my current skills to debug, although learning valgrind will likely >> help me get better with sed debugging, and hopefully get rid of the >> speech-dispatcher crash. >> >> So if you really want Ubuntu's accessibility to get better, I urge you to >> consider helping out in whatever way you can, even if its only filing and >> triaging bugs, thats something. The more bugs that are in a triaged state, >> the less work I have to do, and the more bugs I can attempt to fix. >> >> I hope you all understand, and will do what you can to help. >> >> Regards >> Luke >> >> -- >> Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list >> Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com >> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility >> > -- Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
