Newbie questions about Speakup and debian?

[Al Puzzuoli]

Hello all,
I have been dabbling in linux for several years but most of my experience has been with the RedHat/Fedora flavors.  I recently set up my first system running Debian and have a few questions:
1.  How can the dselect program be used effectively with speakup?  I run it and I get to the point where it looks like I'm supposed to be able to choose packages; However, if I arrow around, Speakup doesn't seem to track.  All it says is "description" after each press of any arrow key.  Am I missing something basic here?
The reason I was playing with dselect  in the first place was to insure a telnet server is installed and functional.  if I can't do this with dselect what's the best way?

Also, any pointers to good Debian faqs would be much appreciated.

thanks,

--al