speakup and brltty

[Adam Myrow]

Oh yes, Speakupp and Brltty work nicely as a pair.  Unlike a Windows
screen reader, Brltty won't follow you if you use Speakup review commands,
but otherwise, they are fine with one another.  Getting Brltty set up is
not nearly as hard as it used to be.  The documentation shows how you can
select a Braille driver at runtime and that made it possible for Slackware
to include it in the Extras folder on the FTP site or the Extra CD that
comes with the full version.  I put Brltty in my /etc/inittab so that it
keeps running no matter what my runlevel is.  My entry looks like:
s2:12345:respawn:/sbin/brltty -n
You have to put the "-n" at the end or it will go bonkers and run hundreds
of Brltty processes.  In fact, the -n option was designed for inittab use.
Add this line to your /etc/inittab, and put the appropriate options in
/etc/brltty.conf and you are ready to go.  An example of /etc/brltty.conf
is:
braille-device /dev/ttyS1
braille-driver ts
This says to use ttyS1 and to use the "TS" driver which is short for
Telesensory.  They were the ones who used to make the PowerBraille and
Navigator series before they got taken over by Blazie and they in turn got
turned into Freedom Scientific.  Anyway, good luck.