Decisions, what to install, how to make it user friendly

[Janina Sajka]

Speakup is by far the easiest to learn.

But, recognize that it isn't an either/or situation. You can have
both.

Before we go further, however, what DEC Talk? It does matter
which one you're asking about. Speakup will not run with software
speech. And, while emacspeak will, there may be a
price--depending on the sound card involved. In other words, a
less than ideal sound card would give you one output at a time,
so no ogg playback while software speech is running, for example.

Lynx is definitely the browser of choice with Speakup. But, the
magic is in the configuration. I'm sending mine for your
consideration separately. Ditto on the Pine configuration.

Be sure to set up the mailcap and mime.types to play sound via
Lynx. Get trplayer for RealAudio support from the command line
from the Speakup ftp site (in the goodies directory). Also, be
sure to install freeamp.

The address book and mail question is a bit trickier. You want to
use a mail client steadily, and not switch among several--until
you learn how to transform among the various mailbox formats.

The Pine addressbook doesn't do street addresses, phone numbers,
etc. It's strictly email.

Mutt is a great choice. There's an abook (address book) that does
do street and phone, I believe. I believe I got it via
freshmeat.net, but don't recall whether it was sourceforge or
not.
The Insideous Little Brother db works with mutt, I believe.

Emacs has outstanding calendaring support via emacspeak. It's a
joy to use, and the appointment alarms are pretty good, too. VM
would be the mailer in this case, and you'duse the Big Brother db
for the address book. W3 (or W3M would be the browser).

You can easily go back and forth between emacspeak and speakup,
but I wouldn't shift the mail, as I mentioned earlier. Browsing
via multiple clients, of course, isn't a problem.

There is software speech for emacspeak, and another screen reader
called yasr that you can get pretty easily. Look at
http://eflite.sf.net.

IBM's ViaVoice has been pulled by IBM. It's higher quality
speech, but a bit more problematic.

Many Speakup users use ALSA rather than OSS for sound recording
and playback. Many also use SpeakFreely for on line voice chats.
If you go ALSA, however, you'll not have good software speech for
emacspeak.

Lastly, I'd stick with Red Hat. There are a lots of blind Red Hat
users, and not nearly as many Suse users. So, the support will be
better with Red Hat.



On Tue, 28 May 2002, C U B I S S S wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> I am trying to hook up Linux on a blind friend's Dell. I'm hoping to get a
> little feedback, as I want to make sure what I set her up with has as low a
> learning curve as possible but still offers certain perks.
> 
> I've installed Red Hat 7.3, but have discovered SuSe as a particularly
> formidable adversary. Does SuSe have a built in Software Voice Synthesizer?
> Is it easier to set up with a DecTalk than Red Hat?
> 
> She is totally blind. She has a Dec Talk plugged into her older machine
> running Dos, WordPerfect.
> 
> I want her new machine to browse the web, check email, have an address book,
> and a word processor. Voice Recording and playback would be great as well.
> 
> I've installed emacspeak, but am guessing the learning curve is a bit too
> steep (for me too). Is the "cursoring" problem with speakup a barrier,
> especially to someone totally foreign to Linux, or is speakup an easier
> product?
> 
> Does anyone know of a FREE software speech synthesizer for either (emacspeak
> or Speakup), as I've said we're pulling the DecTalk out of a machine she is
> currently using, so I'd like to trouble shoot and ascertain with a software
> version until I'm comfortable unplugging her current work station.
> 
> Address book. Is there a command line address book? One that works
> particularly well with SpeakUp? I'd like something that interfaces with her
> email as well as has the ability to print addresses on envelopes. Is that
> too much to expect? I hope not. Is there a command line email client whose
> address book is comprehensive enough?
> 
> Is vi (vim) the editor of choice? Again, highest rating would be a good
> integration with address book, email client.
> 
> I presume Lynx is the browser of choice.
> 
> Sorry about all the questions, I just want to set this up right and figure
> you guys are the ones to ask.
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> 
> Daniel
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 

-- 
	
				Janina Sajka, Director
				Technology Research and Development
				Governmental Relations Group
				American Foundation for the Blind (AFB)

Email: janina at afb.net		Phone: (202) 408-8175

Chair, Accessibility SIG
Open Electronic Book Forum (OEBF)
http://www.openebook.org