Red Hat Enterprise 6.2

[Tony Baechler]

Jason, Red Hat has made it very clear that they have no interest in 
accessibility, so I highly doubt that just contacting them would do any 
good.  I say this from looking at their sites and finding nothing at all 
about accessibility.  They don't even ship Speakup with RHEL as far as I'm 
aware, but since it's in staging, maybe they do now.  As I recall, 6.2 is 
rather old and uses a custom kernel with a large set of patches, so I don't 
think you'll get Speakup to compile.  You could try compiling as modules and 
see if it works, but I wouldn't hold my breath.  I think the same applies to 
CentOS as well.  I'm not sure about Fedora.

I don't know if Australia has any kind of accessibility laws, but I know the 
US and UK do.  Probably someone in the US would have to ask Red Hat to make 
an accessible solution available which they would probably refuse to do.  It 
would then have to go to lawyers to settle.  It might not end up in a suit, 
but it very well might.  Most likely, an advocacy organization like the ACB 
or NFB would have to push Red Hat and it could take years.  Obviously, that 
won't help with the immediate problem.  By law, they are required to provide 
an accessibility solution for you.  Since you're in Australia, I really 
don't know if any of this would apply to you or not.  I would suggest asking 
if you can do the certification with ssh to the RHEL box.  There are ssh 
clients for Linux and Windows, so one way or the other, you could have 
speech.  If they let you bring your own laptop, you could install Debian, 
Arch or Ubuntu on it which would give you Speakup.  If not, you could see if 
they would let you ssh from Windows with NVDA or a different Windows screen 
reader.  As I said, they're required to provide an alternative solution in 
the US, so you might even be able to make them let you borrow a machine.

I don't know anything about your work, but a better approach might be to 
talk to your employer.  Yes, I realize that Red Hat gives the certification, 
but your employer might be able to somehow work with Red Hat and/or let you 
borrow a machine, especially since the point in getting it is for work.  In 
the US, employers with more than I think 10 employees are required to make 
accomodations as necessary for accessibility.  An example would be buying 
someone a screen reader so they can do their job.

In conclusion, I would suggest studying the Americans with Disabilities Act, 
or ADA.  I really don't know if it will help you, but at least you'll know 
what's required by US companies.  The ACB has several ADA seminars from the 
various conventions online.  I'm sure the NFB does as well.  I would suggest 
the following two sites:

http://www.acb.org/
http://www.acbradio.org/

I know there is an organization in Australia as well which might be able to 
help.  Please let us know what happens as I would be very interested to see 
what Red Hat says.

On 3/28/2013 10:16 PM, Jason White wrote:
> Sean Murphy<speakup at linux-speakup.org>  wrote:
>>
>> I am going to prep for the Red Hat Admin certifications. I need to know if what screen reader is available on the console? Speakup you have to compile into the Kernel. So I am not sure if this can be
>> done or not. Any suggestions on how to get this console to work?
>
> I don't know, but have you contacted Red Hat about it? It's their
> certification, after all, hence in their business interests to ensure it's
> accessible to you. there might also be legal implications depending on the
> laws in force in your country.
>
> I am sure that others on this list will have advice to offer, but I think
> raising the issue with Red Hat would be a very good idea not only for you but
> for the benefit of others with access needs.