linux and accessibility applications

[Sean Murphy]

Hi All.

I feel that the following is required:

Improved documentation.  The documentation that is out their is for techo
people.  If you are new to a product, the first thing that some people do,
is hit the docs.  Some Adaptive technology for Linux has nearly no
documentation, while others have average documentation.  Some of the docs
are very technical in nature and don't assist a new user in linux in using
their products.  Tutorials or training manuals are really required.

I feel that BRLTTY and Speakup should be merged into one product.  Braille
and Speech should exist together.  Look on for more improvements to Speakup.

At this point of time, all adaptive technology products have different
methods of accessing the hardware that is used by the vision impaired.  It
would be nice if all programs had a common method of accessing the hardware,
like screen readers and braille displays.  Then the developers of these
products would only need to know one way of accessing these hardware
devices.  Makes it simpular to diagnose probelms.  How this is done, I will
leave it up to the experts.

Expanding the power of speakup to include:

Simular functionality of Vocal-eyes windows.  That is, you define a window
that monitors an area of the screen.  Depending on certain attributes, will
determine if the window is spoken, silence, etc.  This would give more power
to Speakup in using consolue applications.

Unique configuration files for full screen console applications.  Therefore
you could have speech set at different speeds for different application.

User Interface that allows people to change settings within Speakup, without
the need to change files.

Being able to see previous output that has been scrolled off the screen.
You use shift+ page up to do this on a linux console.
Support for more hardware and software synths.  People have mention them
already.

Xwindow at this point of time is outside my experience because of the
limitation of the screen reader.  This should be really the main focus of
developers.  Emacspeak and Speakup are useable and you can do majority of
your work with these applications.  I have already highlighted the areas
that need improvements.  But you can work around these limitations.