speakup, audio solutions

[Kyle]

Yes, XFCE will work without Pulseaudio installed. However, I have had
rather serious problems with speech-dispatcher dying as soon as Orca
starts when configured to speak using ALSA. Installing Pulseaudio seems
to actually help this, but it causes Espeak to chop the end off some
words and completely miss some letters on older systems, and of course,
Pulseaudio will completely stop Speakup from speaking until or unless it
is suspended. I haven't yet found the perfect solution for running
speech-dispatcher+Espeak+Orca on older systems and also running Speakup
on the same system.

Furthermore, while XFCE itself is indeed minimally accessible, I find
that if you only use the graphical environment minimally, i.e. to run
Firefox, XFCE will most likely meet your needs without causing any major
slowdowns, even on old hardware.
~Kyle
http://kyle.tk/
-- 
"Kyle? ... She calls her cake, Kyle?"
Out of This World, season 2 episode 21 - "The Amazing Evie"