[orca-list] Mobile phones, MP3 players, Linux and Orca

[Jason White <jason jasonjgw net>]

I don't have a portable MP3 player, and I think I'm going to skip them
entirely and get a good Linux-based mobile phone instead, which will also be
able to serve as an MP3/OGG/FLACC player.

Maemo seems to be a relatively open Linux-based mobile phone operating system.
They've been using GTK+ until now, but plan to migrate to QT.
See http://lwn.net/Articles/356825/ for details.

If, following the migration of ATK, AT-SPI and Orca to D-BUS, this is
compatible with the accessibility support provided by QT 4, it is possible
that Orca could be made to function in this environment. Input handling would
require some work, in that a mobile phone lacks a fully functional keyboard.

The other major contender is Android, which already has a range of
speech-based applications built on top of the same libraries that support the
corresponding GUI applications. I think Android is much closer to being a
good, accessible solution than anything based on other Linux environments.

On the other hand, it is quite possible that Orca will find its way into
mobile phones at some point, although clearly the move toward QT complicates
this effort somewhat, and nobody has yet stepped forward to make it happen, as
far as I know.