Re: Mythspeech - mythtv for blind/visually impaired
Hello, I am in however I have no one to ask for help while setting it up so I am afraid I am not going to be usefull for quite sometime. I am interested in accessible tv solution for linux so no mather what turns out promising I will start using it. Greetings Peter On 23. 12. 2012 0:36, faginbagin wrote: On 12/22/2012 05:39 PM, Peter Vágner wrote: Hello, I understand mithtv is full solution but writing qt accessibility support is going to be damn complicated. It is a huge codebase and no one has ever considered accessibility before. I would be happy if something like this existed but I think it is not a project for a few open-source developers developing in their spare time. The problem I have is: will it be more complicated, and more kludgy than trying to extend what I've done by building on MythTV's support for LCD displays? All of MythTV's user interface objects are subclasses of a base MythUI class, and there aren't that many subclasses. I think an approach based on Qt accessibility is doable. FWIW, I'm retired and I used to be a pretty good developer, so I think I have the ability and the time to make MythTV accessible to those with no or poor vision. Another problem I have, before investing more time and effort, is whether the mythtv devs would be likely to accept my work into the mainline source code. For that, I think I need to demonstrate there's a market for talking mythtv. That's why I joined this list. Although mythspeech is not a complete solution, it is a starting point and I would love it if I could recruit some more users. BTW do you know projects such as gnome dvb daemon or tvheadent? These dont implement user interface and perfecting and / or writing a totem plugin for these would be avesome as well. Those apps can be setup without eye sight even now however gnome dvb daemon is somewhat buggy and not used frequently and tvheadent is stable, has web based interface. There is excelent fully accessible client for Android for it. So maybe oneday someone will like to create accessible client app for linux as well. No, I am not familiar with those. I am a MythTV user, and a retired developer, looking for ways to combine my interests and my skills. I'm not so sure I'm ready to learn about projects that do less (from my perspective) than MythTV. Greetings Peter On 22. 12. 2012 22:45, faginbagin wrote: I'd like to announce Mythspeech, which makes it easier for the blind and/or visually impaired to use MythTV, an open source DVR (digital video recorder). Information about MythTV can be found here: http://www.mythtv.org/ It is supported by Ubuntu and there is a Ubuntu based distribution customized specifically for MythTV, Mythbuntu: http://www.mythbuntu.org/ More details about Mythspeech can be found here: http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/MythSpeech Mythspeech is not a perfect solution, but I'm told by one user: Maria is VERY happy with her talking MythTV, and it has made her life so much easier! How imperfect is the current implementation of mythspeech? One glaring example is that it cannot help with the initial setup and configuration of MythTV. I think you will need some vision or a friend or family member who can help with this step. I would very much like to talk to developers with experience in accessibility. The current implementation of Mythspeech builds on MythTV's support for LCD displays and uses speech-dispatcher's API, but I'm thinking a better long term approach might be to implement Qt's accessibility classes. MythTV is a Qt application, but it does not use Qt widgets. I would also like to know if there are interested users whose first language is not English. MythTV has been translated into many languages, and mythspeech should be able to speak in those languages, if they are supported by speech-dispatcher. But there are some things that could be improved if there is interest. Of course, I welcome any and all feedback, bug reports, etc. Regards, Helen -- Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
Re: Ringtail accessibility (from actually testing it)
I installed Ringtail yesterday from the daily iso image, I took a video while doing it but I need to edit that down before posting it. Once you have a computer that will boot from USB (bit of fiddling in the bios with no audio available) it boots to a grub menu. First option is to run the desktop, second option is to install ubuntu, so cursor down and enter after booting. After the drums, wait a couple of seconds then press ctrl+s to start orca Alt-tab doesn't work to get to the ubiquity window, so you have to use a mouse. The mouse cursor starts out in the center of the screen and is in the right place, so you just have to make a left mouse button click happen to move focus to ubiquity. Once in ubiquity it works as before. I would strongly recommend being plugged in to wired internet for the installation process - connecting to wifi is challenging (and might not work depending on your wifi card) and if you are not connected to the internet it won't correctly guess your location, timezone and keyboard preferences and will assume you are in New York, USA with a US keyboard layout. Apart from that I could proceed through the ubiquity screens to the end, restart and boot into a desktop with orca running. First time I did it the unity dash spoke the button names for applications, but since then it has been silent. The launcher speaks OK and other applications work as before. So the regressions are - starts with a grub menu (this is probably temporary) - no alt-tab at the start of ubiquity, you need a mouse click. the rest is the same bugs as before as far as I can tell. Alan. -- Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
Re: Mythspeech - mythtv for blind/visually impaired
Hi B.H. The current implementation of mythspeech doesn't depend on Qt or Orca. It does depend on speech-dispatcher, it's library libspeechd, and a speech synthesizer, e.g. espeak or festival. The versions provided on precise 12.04 is 0.7.1 for speech-dispatcher/libspeechd and 1.46.02 for espeak. The versions provided on lucid 10.04 is 0.6.8 for speech-dispatcher/libspeechd and 1.43.03 for espeak. The lucid 10.04 version might be good enough to support mythspeech. I see that the latest version of Vinux, 3.0.2, is based on Ubuntu 10.04.4. I believe that also means Vinux uses the Ubuntu 10.04 repositories. So, if you install mythtv 0.23 on Vinux, I should be able to provide a mythspeech that will work on Vinux without you needing to compile anything from source. If there's at least one person who would be willing to install and configure MythTV 0.23 and test mythspeech on either Vinux 3.0.2 or Ubuntu/Mythbuntu 10.04 or 10.10, I'd be happy to see if I can backport mythspeech. Regards, Helen On 12/23/2012 03:15 AM, B. Henry wrote: The problem, with these older releases is that the later orca releases only run on unity, and I think really only 12.04 and to a point 11.10 work well enough to be viable. The reason then later orca versions are needed are so that some QT support is available. I know nothing about the details of what QT programs work and which don't. GTK+ is pretty much what Orca worked with until about a year ago. I'll post your original post as well as these replies to a couple other lists and perhaps get up more interest. I'm going to sleep right now, but I'll get off a few e-mails tomorrow. The Vinux list is an especially good place as there are over 300 blind and low vision subscribers, and while many are mixed OS-users, others like myself use Linux as their primary or only OS. Vinux is basically just Ubuntu with some special tweaks, some settings preconfigured to be more speech and magnifier friendly and some extra scripts and different software choices again to make things work as well out of the box for blind and low vision folk. Then there's a private list for some blind Linux students and another small googlegroup/mailing list for folks interested in open-source and accessibility. Hopefully between these lists and my twitter and facebook contacts I can find some other interested people. Thanks again, and I will be in touch. On 12/22/2012 05:18 PM, faginbagin wrote: Hi B.H. (an anyone else using an older distribution) If there's interest, I can see what it would take to get mythspeech working on 10.04. As it happens, my production MythTV environment consists of machines running 10.04 and 10.10 (for TV tuners that needed a newer kernel), with MythTV 0.23. Regards, Helen P.S. Time to sign off until tomorrow. On 12/22/2012 05:13 PM, B. Henry wrote: does this software have a CLI, or is this only interacted with via the qt interface? I am a native English speaker, but speak more Spanish than English these days, for some years now, so perhaps I could be of some assistance. I don't currently have a version of Ubuntu that allows the use of the latest Orca and thus QT however. This will be changing soon, but for now I'm using a combination of 10.04 and 11.04 and xdesktop orca. Sounds very interesting, and I'll for sure be giving this a try when possible. -- Regards, B.H. On 12/22/2012 03:45 PM, faginbagin wrote: I'd like to announce Mythspeech, which makes it easier for the blind and/or visually impaired to use MythTV, an open source DVR (digital video recorder). Information about MythTV can be found here: http://www.mythtv.org/ It is supported by Ubuntu and there is a Ubuntu based distribution customized specifically for MythTV, Mythbuntu: http://www.mythbuntu.org/ More details about Mythspeech can be found here: http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/MythSpeech Mythspeech is not a perfect solution, but I'm told by one user: Maria is VERY happy with her talking MythTV, and it has made her life so much easier! How imperfect is the current implementation of mythspeech? One glaring example is that it cannot help with the initial setup and configuration of MythTV. I think you will need some vision or a friend or family member who can help with this step. I would very much like to talk to developers with experience in accessibility. The current implementation of Mythspeech builds on MythTV's support for LCD displays and uses speech-dispatcher's API, but I'm thinking a better long term approach might be to implement Qt's accessibility classes. MythTV is a Qt application, but it does not use Qt widgets. I would also like to know if there are interested users whose first language is not English. MythTV has been translated into many languages, and mythspeech should be able to speak in those languages, if they are supported by speech-dispatcher. But there are some things that could be improved if there is interest. Of course, I welcome any and all
Re: Mythspeech - mythtv for blind/visually impaired
I would love to know if there's one mailing list that would allow me to reach the widest audience. I don't know if I'm up to joining ten different lists. For what it's worth, last night, Ron Whyte (aka Fudge) set up an IRC channel, #MythSpeech, on irc.freenode.net. I'm there now and expect to be whenever I'm online, so maybe that's a good place to direct people interested in this subject? Regards, Helen On 12/23/2012 03:15 AM, B. Henry wrote: The problem, with these older releases is that the later orca releases only run on unity, and I think really only 12.04 and to a point 11.10 work well enough to be viable. The reason then later orca versions are needed are so that some QT support is available. I know nothing about the details of what QT programs work and which don't. GTK+ is pretty much what Orca worked with until about a year ago. I'll post your original post as well as these replies to a couple other lists and perhaps get up more interest. I'm going to sleep right now, but I'll get off a few e-mails tomorrow. The Vinux list is an especially good place as there are over 300 blind and low vision subscribers, and while many are mixed OS-users, others like myself use Linux as their primary or only OS. Vinux is basically just Ubuntu with some special tweaks, some settings preconfigured to be more speech and magnifier friendly and some extra scripts and different software choices again to make things work as well out of the box for blind and low vision folk. Then there's a private list for some blind Linux students and another small googlegroup/mailing list for folks interested in open-source and accessibility. Hopefully between these lists and my twitter and facebook contacts I can find some other interested people. Thanks again, and I will be in touch. On 12/22/2012 05:18 PM, faginbagin wrote: Hi B.H. (an anyone else using an older distribution) If there's interest, I can see what it would take to get mythspeech working on 10.04. As it happens, my production MythTV environment consists of machines running 10.04 and 10.10 (for TV tuners that needed a newer kernel), with MythTV 0.23. Regards, Helen P.S. Time to sign off until tomorrow. On 12/22/2012 05:13 PM, B. Henry wrote: does this software have a CLI, or is this only interacted with via the qt interface? I am a native English speaker, but speak more Spanish than English these days, for some years now, so perhaps I could be of some assistance. I don't currently have a version of Ubuntu that allows the use of the latest Orca and thus QT however. This will be changing soon, but for now I'm using a combination of 10.04 and 11.04 and xdesktop orca. Sounds very interesting, and I'll for sure be giving this a try when possible. -- Regards, B.H. On 12/22/2012 03:45 PM, faginbagin wrote: I'd like to announce Mythspeech, which makes it easier for the blind and/or visually impaired to use MythTV, an open source DVR (digital video recorder). Information about MythTV can be found here: http://www.mythtv.org/ It is supported by Ubuntu and there is a Ubuntu based distribution customized specifically for MythTV, Mythbuntu: http://www.mythbuntu.org/ More details about Mythspeech can be found here: http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/MythSpeech Mythspeech is not a perfect solution, but I'm told by one user: Maria is VERY happy with her talking MythTV, and it has made her life so much easier! How imperfect is the current implementation of mythspeech? One glaring example is that it cannot help with the initial setup and configuration of MythTV. I think you will need some vision or a friend or family member who can help with this step. I would very much like to talk to developers with experience in accessibility. The current implementation of Mythspeech builds on MythTV's support for LCD displays and uses speech-dispatcher's API, but I'm thinking a better long term approach might be to implement Qt's accessibility classes. MythTV is a Qt application, but it does not use Qt widgets. I would also like to know if there are interested users whose first language is not English. MythTV has been translated into many languages, and mythspeech should be able to speak in those languages, if they are supported by speech-dispatcher. But there are some things that could be improved if there is interest. Of course, I welcome any and all feedback, bug reports, etc. Regards, Helen -- Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
