linux-speakup.org home of The Speakup Project

A desire has been expressed to give The Speakup Web site a new look and feel. here is your chance to have your say in what the new site should look like. You can email your suggestions to the Web Master Your ideas, suggestions, and feedback to others' ideas will be gathered here. Each idea will be consider and where possible incorporated into the new Speakup Web site.

New Speakup Web Site Ideas

• Tue. 04/15/2008 9:00 AM
  Alastair Irving
  
  I think you should consider making the website into a wiki so that it can become more of a community effort. The orca website works well in this way.
  
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• Tue. 04/15/2008 9:05 AM
  Willem van der Walt
  
  1. It should still work with lynx the cat once you are done.
  2. Have prominent instructions on building speakup with the latest information.
  3. have an indication of dead none-working programs if they are still shown.
  
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  • Tue. 04/15/2008 11:21 AM
    Gaijin
    
    I would be more interested in working programs, myself, starting with the best first and optionally detailing problems and their work-arounds, if any. FTP site organization in a tree structured format would be nice, too. Especially for us near-clueless newbies. Personally, I work best starting with descriptive topic links and being able to run a serch that's likely to find the topic I'm looking for, searching for words/text like "compil", "keys", and "compatib", and knowing I'll find compiling instructions, defined keystrokes, and compatible software, respectively. Key topics being listed in alphabetical order would also be helpful for people so new that they don't know how to use search would even be a help if an index becomes a bit large. Just tossing out ideas, not suggestions.
    
  • Tue. 04/15/2008 12:40 PM
    Garrett Klein
    
    What I think would be nice is some page with the latest status of speakup in distributions (e.g. Slackware, Ubuntu, Fedora, Gentoo) and possibly user-contributed instructions as to what is required to get it working (like on Gentoo, which is kind of fun since it does everything from source).
    
    I think one of the big problems right now is that people want their distro to "just work" (tm), but don't know what they can just download and burn to get a talking console. I mean, Ubuntu is all the rage lately and that's great, but it's not too cool if you want speakup.
    
• Tue 04/15/2008 9:09 AM
  W. Nick Dotson
  
  I want to learn about Linux, use it to get real stuff like e-mail and personal word processing done, plus many other ideas of things I'd like to be able to do with it as an alternative to everything I now do in Windoes. The problem is, it seems that the only way into Linux is to be a programmer and have the time and energy to wade through the disorganized poorly written documentation out their in Linux land. Janina's stuff is well written, and usually she understands that some of us need to be lead by the hand as we're absorbing jargon and concepts, but that's the exception to most of what I've encountered and what has stopped me from persuing my interest. I would like to see a site with resources which would help me as an interested newbee which didn't expect I could program in C, have used UNIX for the last 40 years, and want to spend the few minutes I have to spare for this writing code I don't know how to write. As I see it, Linux will be a Geekish dead-end until it gets enough user's to fund useful interfaces and code for useful applications rather than tinker toys where people are talking about scripting this module and that, compiling Etc., something most of us who want to do real things have neither time nor patience or energy for not to mention expertise. (grin) So, education and tutorials, and ways those of us with Windows can get the tools to build our Linux computers which will most likely be retired Windows boxes until we get good and knowledgeable enough to build dedicated Linux boxes from scratch.
  
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• Wed. 04/16/2008 6:54 AM
  Tony Baechler
  
  One thing that I think is in desperate need of being addressed is making other developers aware that Speakup exists, greatly increases accessibility, and can easily be installed into a production kernel. I have two specific reasons for saying this. First, there are very few distros which include Speakup as part of their official kernel and installer images. Unless I'm mistaken, Debian doesn't include it officially now and the unofficial install image isn't current. I would strongly recommend against anyone using the unofficial Etch kernel with Speakup because it hasn't been updated since the release of Etch and has known security flaws that aren't fixed. Most of the smaller and lesser known distros don't include Speakup either even though there is no good reason not to include it. I have thought about using various specialized distros designed to replace hardware routers and firewalls but I'm not aware of any that include Speakup. Obviously the point would be to keep the distro small but it could still be built into the kernel.
  
  The second reason may be of less interest to people here but I think it's important just the same. That is to make commercial projects that are based on the Linux kernel also aware of Speakup. Specifically, I'm working with a company that makes backup imaging software for DOS, Windows, and Linux. It is possible but difficult to use the DOS version with a screen reader. I suggested that they could build Speakup into the Linux version and it would be accessible out of the box. They seemed interested but I think the project is stalled because the site is not current. I didn't know at the time, but apparently Speakup had already switched to git and there was no mention of that in the old CVS repository. Apparently they found the new git repo but I don't know how because I wasn't aware of it until Kirk posted the url here. It makes it difficult to push for better accessibility when the site is very old and the project looks abandoned. While I'm here, I would also like to suggest putting a link to the most current release (maybe a snapshot made nightly from git?) and the most recent stable release right on the home page. Many people, especially the developers described above, don't have time to browse through a site just to find a download link. Since most people consider it a favor to include any kind of accessibility in their particular distro's kernel, they really don't understand what Speakup is except that it's supposed to help the blind. Maybe a mp3 demo of someone using Speakup for daily tasks would be good.
  
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  • Tue. 04/22/2008 8:02 AM
    Steve Holmes
    
    Keeping the information up to date is crucial here. I think I like the wiki idea once people learn how to use it, it might be a lot easier to keep stuff current. I also agree that a snapshot should be made available frequently. With so many distros not including a speakup-patched kernel, this may be the next best alternative and if somebody has to go to git to pull down an experimental version of speakup, it could be a real turn-off. Again, many new-comers probably haven't a clue about compiling kernels yet and they want a talking Linux to try out.
    
    I think Bill Acker has done a commendable job at keeping up with the speakup-modified kernels for the Fedora distributions. I also commend Pat and the Slackware folks for keeping speakup in their kernels also. Since I'm a Slackware user, I should keep more involved with them to be sure it stays that way.
    
    
  • Wed. 04/23/2008 8:35 AM
    Alex Snow
    
    I'm personally not a big fan of wiki-based documentation...It does kind of help keep documentation current, but it also produces a lot of bad docs (users posting incorrect solutions to problems, poor organization, etc) unless it has someone who makes a point of keeping the wiki organized and making sure the information is good.