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Re: [orca-list] The State Of Linux Accessibility

Great to hear.  I hadn't heard of Nama.  I'll check it out.  How does it stack up against Ardour and 
Rosegarden?  Also, is it still necessary to buy an extra sound card if you want to use Jackd and still have 
speech?

Alex M



-----Original Message-----
From: Willem van der Walt [mailto:wvdwalt csir co za] 
Sent: Thursday, August 06, 2015 12:38 AM
To: Alex Midence
Cc: 'kendell clark'; 'Vincenzo Rubano'; 'Keith Hinton'; 'orca-list'
Subject: Re: [orca-list] The State Of Linux Accessibility

Hi,
Reacently, there was a discussion regarding audio on the blinux list.
One can use lillypond to produce sheet music.
A number of other tools were discussed there as well.
If you want to do multi track recording, there is nama.
People serius about music under linux use jackd as a sound server.
All I am saying, is that there are some options available to blind musitions under Linux.
If the person is for some reason only prepared to considder software that runs under a GUI, there might be a 
problem.
Regards, Willem


On Wed, 5 Aug 2015, Alex Midence wrote:


Audio production is something of a tender spot for me.  I did some pretty extensive digging a few years ago 
on the subject and my findings were frankly disappointing. 

Fact:  Historically, one of the vocations at which blind people have exceled has been music.  Some 
noteworthy blind musicians the reader may be acquainted with include Homer, Ah Bing, Francesco Da Milano, 
Joaquin Rodrigo, Andrea Bocelli, Ray Charles, Stevie wonder, Jeff Healey, José Feliciano and, last but 
certainly not by a million miles least Monsieur Louis Braille. 

Now then, the question was posed by a blind musician from the eastern U.S. seaboard if there were anything 
accessible and comparable to Sound Forge and Audition in Windows on the Linux platform.  These are 
professional quality pieces of music software.  I found two of them which most closely matched up in 
features and capabilities.  These were Ardour built on GTK and Rosegarden built on QT.  Be it know that 
these far outstrip something like Jokosh and Audacity in what they can do as they target professional 
musicians as opposed to people dabbling in the odd sound editing project or two.  Neither one of these 
pieces of software were accessible.  Neither was Lilipond or fluidsynth.  So, at this time, there is no 
accessible way for the average blind musical professional to work with any score editing, mixing or sound 
studio type software in so far as I know.  It's a real bummer.  I would *Love* to be proven wrong on this 
one so, please be my guest.

Alex M

-----Original Message-----
From: kendell clark [mailto:coffeekingms gmail com]
Sent: Wednesday, August 05, 2015 4:58 PM
To: Alex Midence; 'Vincenzo Rubano'; 'Keith Hinton'
Cc: 'orca-list'
Subject: Re: [orca-list] The State Of Linux Accessibility

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hi
Impress is an absolutely valid point. I don't know why orca works with it so poorly, but if I had to guess, 
I'd say a combination of poor libreoffice accessibility support and no orca specific code for it. If no one 
has filed a bug against impress, I'll go ahead and do that now.
As for being able to do things on linux you could do on windows, this is valid, up to a point. The people 
that usually make statements like this, or at least the people I deal with who do,  often mean, "I want to 
do the same thing on linux that I did on windows, using the same programs and doing it the exact same way I 
used to do it on windows".
Which means, for example, when you tell them that there's no mush z in 
linux but that there's tintin and a sound pack for alter aeon, "that's 
too hard. I want a gui installer that does all of this for me because 
that's how windows does it. If I can't have that then linux sucks and 
I won't use it." Pdf files is another area where linux needs 
improving. This is supposed to improve greatly in gnome 3.18, but I 
haven't tested it yet. Then again, the only accessible pdf reader on 
windows is adobe's own, so while it might work better there, you are 
limited in what programs you can use. None of the open source or 
alternative pdf readers in windows as far as I know work with any 
screen readers. I'd argue that linux is accessible enough for 
beginner, intermediate, and advanced work, depending of course on the 
kind of work you do. Audio production is one area where blind people 
cling to windows. There are people on this list who know a lot more 
about this than I do but if windows wins out in

  this area then we need to buck up and fix it. For what little audio work I do, download from youtube, 
converting and editing files and audio metadata, linux works absolutely fine and there are gui options for 
all. As for the crackling, this is a well known issue. I understand it has something to do with 
speech-dispatcher's use of the pulse audio api. Luke and jeremy ... something, can't remember his last name, 
are actively working to fix this, which should be available in either a new speech-dispatcher 0.8 release or 
a 0.9 release, I'm not sure yet. But it's definitely known and being worked on. I'd say this in closing. No 
matter which platform you use, linux, windows, ios, android, osx, there are going to be areas where 
accessibility is great and those dark corners where it could be better. It's just the nature of 
accessibility. Linux wins out in my opinion mostly due to it's open source model, it's lack of activation and 
it's ease of maintenance. I can throw a distro on a usb dri  ve and boot it on any computer and have a live 
working environment. I can either use that as is or install it.

I understand osx can do something similar, I've never used it. I say linux wins out because it's not 
limited to a particular brand of computer by license agreements. My two scents.
Thanks
Kendell clark


Alex Midence wrote:

I don't know.  I think comparing how well something can be accessibly 
accomplished in Linux to how well that same task can be done in 
Windows is a valid exercise as long as you don't make sweeping 
statements like "The overall accessibility experience in Linux sucks 
compared to Windows."  If you are used to being able to do X on one 
platform, it is natural to feel you should be able to do it on 
another just as accessibly and with as little extra effort on your 
part as you had to expend on the other platform.

With Linux, my main gripe is presentations.  I rely on them every day 
at work since I'm a trainer and they are something of a lifeblood for 
me.  In Windows, we use PowerPoint which Window Eyes, in particular, 
works extremely well with.  Jaws does OK but Window Eyes is 
absolutely outstanding with it.  I can't say the same with Orca and 
Impress.  If I got hired somewhere and their company policy was to 
have all their class presentations in Impress format, I'd be in deep 
trouble.  I'd have to argue for letting me use Beamer which is a part 
of LaTEx.  I'd still be in hot water because the output is to PDF's 
which Evince handles only rudimentarily in regular documents and very 
poorly in pdf slides.  I'd have to see about having them let me make 
a very basic Windows vm so I can use Adobe while that all gets sorted 
out.  I understand there's a way to do this sort of thing with html 
and javascript but I don't know it yet.  So, it would be natural for 
someone like me to wish that presentations were as easy to do 
accessibly in Linux as they are in windows where you don't  have to 
learn a complex markup language to get the job done.

Just an example. Alex M

-----Original Message----- From: orca-list 
[mailto:orca-list-bounces gnome org] On Behalf Of kendell clark
Sent: Wednesday, August 05, 2015 4:22 PM To: Vincenzo Rubano; Keith 
Hinton Cc: orca-list Subject: Re: [orca-list] The State Of Linux 
Accessibility

hi This is partly valid and partly not. The stuff about unlabeled 
controls in gnome is absolutely spot on. While it's gotten quite a 
bit better in the newest gnome, version 3.16, there are still areas 
in the control center that aren't labeled well. I've filed bugs 
against these parts and we're just waiting for fixes. Mate is also 
pretty accessible. You *do* get access to the applets. It is a bit 
weird though, and I don't really understand what's causing orca to 
not like the panel very much. I'd have to say a combination of old 
gnome 2 code in orca that mate uses and old accessibility code on 
mate's part. Both can be fixed. We *need* more users. I'm rather 
tired of people picking on linux's accessibility issues as if they 
were written in stone. Not that you've done that. The issues can get 
fixed. It's going to take more orca users doing what I and joanie do. 
File bugs, test stuff, report what doesn't work. I've not seen much 
of this here, though granted not everyone has the luxury of sitting 
around all day like I do. Gnome was part of GSOC this year and they 
had a couple of people hacking on java atk wrapper specifically to 
bring java accessibility up to snuff.
Joanie has dropped a couple of hints that gnome 3.18's accessibility 
will be much better, so I believe her, although I haven't been able 
to find anything on that. I've used windows, including the latest 
version from redmond. To be completely blunt, if this is the best ms 
can put out, we've got it made. The accessibility issues will no 
doubt get fixed with windows updates, but if this were my first 
impression of windows I'd be saying it's accessibility were going 
backwards. Tested with the latest windows
10 RTM build. We just need to focus on makeing an already great OS 
even greater. We do this by filing bugs, testing features. We don't 
do it by looking at what windows does or does not do better and 
constantly comparing the two. I'm guilty of this myself sometimes, 
particularly when I feel close to burning out. That's my two scents 
Thanks Kendell clark


Vincenzo Rubano wrote:

Hi Keith,



I know this message will make some people angry, but I want to share 
my point of view on linux accessibility. This came out rather long, 
so enjoy a cup of coffee while reading. ;)



First off, when talking about linux accessibility I like to clarify 
what I think is an important aspect: fragmentation is a problem for 
accessibility. Since every piece of software can be configured with 
different options/different library versions/different parameters 
and each distribution can make a lot of decisions on these aspects, 
it’s hard to say what’s accessible and what is not. As you can see, 
there are too many variables to consider. Too many for my tastes…



This being said, we have to distinguish between command line 
accessibility and GUI accessibility. If we talk about command line, 
we’re in a great situation. Just choose a kernel which is optimally 
configured for speakup (i.e. the debian kernel starting from version
3.2 or the Talking Arch one are two examples that I’ve used). If we 
talk about GUI, well, that’s another story…



The only “accessible” desktops out of the box are Gnome and Mate. 
Please note the quotes wrapping the “accessible” word, their 
meanings will be clearer after the lines below. Gnome works, but 
there are some areas of the Gnome-Shell that are completely 
inaccessible for Orca. Gnome Control Center has unlabeled controls 
scattered here and there with some of them being not usable at all 
and Gnome Tweak Tool has the same issues plus a few focus-related 
ones. Evolution, the default mail client included in Gnome, is 
completely inaccessible (1). There are other Gnome pieces that are 
not accessible, but my memory does not recall their names. Tested 
with Gnome 3.14.3 and Orca 3.14.3.
Mate is a Gnome 2 fork. It is accessible, if you mind not having 
access to most of the applets (i.e. the applet to control wifi
connections) and having unreliable multiple file selection due to 
Orca not announcing properly when an item is selected or not. Add a 
few other issues here and there and that’s the Mate situation.
Tested with Mate 1.8.* and Orca 3.14.3.



Libreoffice/openoffice are the only complete office suites for linux. 
Saying that they’re accessible is really an abuse of the word, 
though. Libreoffice Writer can be used to some degree, but if you 
need to have complex formatting, multiple tables with many rows and 
columns and form controls embedded in your document, then be 
prepared to a lot of accessibility issues. And remember that you 
won’t be able to use structural navigation within LibreOffice 
documents due to a Libreoffice bug sitting in their queue for years. 
Impress, Calc, Base and Math have even more severe and critical 
accessibility issues that make them far from being usable if you’re 
blind. Tested with Libreoffice 4.3.* and
4.4.* with Orca 3.14.3. Notice that LibreOffice seems to run a 
little bit better under Debian than under Ubuntu, but don’t ask me 
the reason why.



The only decent way to browse the Web with orca is using Firefox. 
There’s not too much to complain about that, if you don’t mind 
having a lot of troubles with complex applications such as webmails 
and with websites that often refresh the page via ajax. Also, make 
sure to enable the Orca configuration option to show one control for 
each line in a web page, otherwise you’ll have a lot of latency 
whenever you get to a line with more than
10 controls (i.e. 10 radio buttons). (2)



Let’s spend some words on the Speech Dispatcher/Alsa/PulseAudio 
thing. Wow, too many parties involved, don’t you think so?
Anyways, I’ve always had two issues: 1. From the SpeechDispatcher 
configuration, enable a module which is not present in 
SpeechDispatcher (i.e module for Pico under a Debian installation).
Restart the SpeechDispatcher service and… Voilà, no speech at all! 
And no way to recover, unless you can remotely access your machine 
or you have a Braille display or sighted assistance to rely on. 
Tested with Debian Wheezy/Jessie. 2. While the computer is of, plug 
in your headsets. Turn on the computer.
Unplug the headsets: you would expect audio to come from your laptop 
speakers, but you won’t get audio output at all. Plug in again your 
headsets and… Audio is there. Tested under Debian Wheezy/Jessie and 
Ubuntu-Mate 14.04.



Finally, let me spend some words on development. Accessibility bugs 
that can be fixed/worked around in Orca get fixed rather quickly, 
but the problem is that those fixes get to end users too slowly for 
my tastes. If a bug is in the accessibility infrastructure (i.e.
pyatspi, atspi, atk and others), then they’ll be sitting there for 
years. Not to mention bugs within Gnome itself or third party 
apps/frameworks (LibreOffice and Qt just to mention two examples).



(1): Evolution accessibility is improving from what I can read, but 
currently it’s tricky to get to the message body after you open it.
There is thunderbird as an alternative, but if you are like me and 
use more than 5 different mailboxes with 20+ different folders and 
thousands of messages, you won't find Thunderbird a great piece of 
software to work with in terms of accessibility.



(2) Recently, there has been some work to improve these aspects in 
Orca. We’ll see them in a 3.18 or something like that release, so be 
patient if you need some serious accessibility support within web 
content.



Vincenzo.



Il giorno 05 ago 2015, alle ore 08:30, Keith Hinton 
<keithint1234 gmail com> ha scritto:

Hi folks, it has been a very long while since I have posted to the 
Orca mailing list. In fact, more than a year. I was writing in to 
find out from people who know what they are talking about what the 
current state of Linux accessibility is with Orca, etc. I was 
wondering how the major Linux distributions like Fedora, Open Sues, 
etc are doing with Orca, Speech Dispatcher, and generally over all 
how is Linux these days? I have avoided Linux for a long while 
because I have a friend who believes actually, who is utterly 
convinced that linux accessibility is going backwards. But I don't 
honestly know for sure if that is so. So, I naturally question him 
and would like to know from those of you out their who are involved 
in Linux accessibility generally how do you think Linux is? WouldI 
be able to run something under Gnome these days like Virtual Box?
How does Linux perform with the latest and greatest CPUs, multi 
core SMP  hardware and such from your experiences>? My friend says 
to me that most of you are using old clunky outdated hardware which 
is why you don't get Speech Dispatcher or Orca subsystem crashes, 
etc. But I haven't used Linux in so long that I figure the time is 
now to actually just come out and ask and see what responses I get.
Obviously, I know that everybody will have their own distribution 
prefferences. But I'm not here to start a war on Ubuntu, vs Fadora, 
etc. I am trying aside from an OS specific fight to figure out what 
the current honest state of Linux accessibility is. Is it actually 
falling back and going backwards and thus dying out? I don't know.
Is it worth grabbing something like the latest oh, I don't know, 
Open Suse, Fadora or similar and giving Orca a spin?

So I was hopeing some of you out their might have a better idea. 
Thanks!

All the best, Keith
_______________________________________________ orca-list mailing 
list orca-list gnome org 
https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list Visit 
http://live.gnome.org/Orca for more information on Orca. The manual 
is at 
http://library.gnome.org/users/gnome-access-guide/nightly/ats-2.htm
l







The FAQ is at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions

Log bugs and feature requests at http://bugzilla.gnome.org Find out 
how to help at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/HowCanIHelp



_______________________________________________ orca-list mailing 
list orca-list gnome org 
https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list Visit 
http://live.gnome.org/Orca for more information on Orca. The manual 
is at 
http://library.gnome.org/users/gnome-access-guide/nightly/ats-2.html






The FAQ is at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions

Log bugs and feature requests at http://bugzilla.gnome.org Find out 
how to help at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/HowCanIHelp


_______________________________________________ orca-list mailing 
list orca-list gnome org 
https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list
Visit http://live.gnome.org/Orca for more information on Orca. The 
manual is at 
http://library.gnome.org/users/gnome-access-guide/nightly/ats-2.html



The FAQ is at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions

Log bugs and feature requests at http://bugzilla.gnome.org Find out 
how to help at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/HowCanIHelp


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_______________________________________________
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Visit http://live.gnome.org/Orca for more information on Orca.
The manual is at 
http://library.gnome.org/users/gnome-access-guide/nightly/ats-2.html
The FAQ is at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions
Log bugs and feature requests at http://bugzilla.gnome.org Find out 
how to help at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/HowCanIHelp
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