[orca-list] Accessible VOIP systems

[Michael Whapples <mwhapples aim com>]

Hello,
I'm going to go carefully on this one as I know how a basic question 
regarding skype went into a rather off topic discusssion, I hope this 
doesn't.

Also I hope I used the correct generic term (VOIP) for what I mean, I am 
talking about any of the computer based telephone type services (eg. 
skype, teamspeak, SIP, etc). I will continue to use the term VOIP for 
this, sorry to anyone if this is wrong.

So what is this message actually about? Which VOIP systems are 
accessible with orca, and which are the better ones?

I did a bit of research yesterday and here is some of what I found out 
(may be some of this wants to find its way to the orca wiki, don't know, 
I will leave that decission to others should they want to).

Skype: Not currently accessible because it uses QT for the GUI, may be 
the work on at-spi dbus will help. Possibly useable (to some extent, not 
sure on how much) with one of the plugins for a different system 
(skype4pidgin or bitlbee-skype) although I never got one of these 
actually working on my system. I did manage to get the Skype4Py python 
skype API working and could check my details and perform a user search 
(I didn't test any more), so I suppose at least I know an external 
application can connect to skype on my system, not sure why the plugins 
didn't work. May be an alternative interface application could be 
created using python, I am not sure I would want to spend a huge amount 
of time on developing that but I would be willing to help out.

TeamSpeak: Linux client not accessible. Also I think this may not fall 
in free software as it is in the non-free repository of debian, I don't 
know fully how restricted it is.

TeamBlittityBlattity: I am mentioning this purely because it relates to 
teamspeak. It appears its a opensource client for teamspeak and might be 
accessible as it uses WX widgets. I can't comment whether it is 
accessible or how well it works as I couldn't compile it on my system to 
try it out, it seems quite old so may be that's why I couldn't compile 
it. Anyway if you want to look at it then look at http://teambb.sf.net

Mumble: This is an open source system (I believe using its own 
protocol), but they claim it achieves good sound quality and 
low-latency. Again this is QT so not currently accessible. I don't know 
whether any developers plan to make alternative clients for it.

SIP: Probably the most flexible solution as there are many clients (eg. 
ekiga, linphone, etc). Both linphone and ekiga seem accessible although 
I think I noticed some problems with the tabbing inside ekiga. Linphone 
has both command line versions and a GUI version, both are useable. I 
don't know how the sound quality compares to others as I don't have 
enough experience with the various systems, can much better be expected 
(IE. is it very desireable to get one of the other systems accessible?), 
may be others can comment.

So is there any system I have missed which is worth mentioning? Is there 
any other accessible clients other than those mentioned? As SIP seems to 
be the only natively accessible system on Linux may be the orca wiki 
needs details of using ekiga or linphone.

Any other thoughts which would be on topic?

Michael Whapples