Re: [orca-list] Some small linux device

[Mewtamer <mewtamer gmail com>]

The Raspberry VI website use to host images of Raspbian that came with
piespeakup(a fork of espeakup written to deal with a critical bug in
an older version of Raspbian's ALSA drivers) preinstalled and
configured to load at boot. Those images have since been taken down
due to being based on a severely outdated version of Raspbian and not
replaced due to the site's owner not having the spare time to maintain
them.

If memory serves, the owner of Raspberry VI was working on some
ansible code for automating taking a fresh install of Raspbian or Arch
for ARM to something ready for direct blind use for a number of
different use cases, but it's been months since there was any progress
reports on that effort.

And while I haven't used it, it is my understanding that Stormux is
currently the most active project for a Raspberry Pi compatible image
that comes with blind accessiblity already setup.

That said, starting with the latest Raspbian-Lite image, getting a
talking command line system should be as simple as:

1. Write the image to microSD card.
2. Make an empty file named ssh on the microSD's boot partition(The
smaller, FAT32 partition, the larger, probably Ext4 or another Linux
native filesystem would be the root partition, containing the OS).
3. Load the card into the Pi,connect the Pi to your router, and boot up.
4. SSH into the Pi.
5. Follow a tutorial for installing your text-mode screen reader of
choice. As Raspbian is basically Debian optimized for the Pi, any
Debian-based or distro agnostic tutorial is likely to work.

Prior to the Pi 4, Running a desktop environment with Orca was more an
exercise in "because it can be done" than a practical one as earlier
models simply didn't have enough raw power to handle the Desktop, the
accessibility stack, and heavy weight applications, but I hear the 4GB
version of the Pi 4 actually has the needed resources to make this
viable and I hear the latest version of Raspbian has made it easier to
setup Orca to work with Pixel, the reskinned LXDE that serves as the
default DE in Raspbian.

That said, I only own a Pi 2 and an original Pi 3, so I can't offer
much in the way of first-hand experience with the GUI on the Pi, and
the only text-mode screenreader I've setup myself to date was
piespeakup, which is probably out of date and arguably no longer
needed as I've heard nothing of the bug that necessitated its existing
resurfacing since it was first fixed upstream.

But yeah, if you have an accessible machine to write the image and do
any setup over ssh needed, sighted assistence isn't needed to get a
system up and running on the Pi... in fact, the only times I can ever
recall needing sighted assistence getting any Linux system up and
running is fixing the boot order in bios(not an issue with the Pi) and
burning installation media for setting up my first accessible Linux
box(once you've got an accessible system, creating installation media
to upgrade it or create more accessible systems is easy).

On 7/8/20, Kyle via orca-list <orca-list gnome org> wrote:
> Stormux will run and come up talking on the Raspberry Pi 4. I think
> there's still one for the 3B+ as well.
>
> https://stormux.org/
>
> ~Kyle
>
> _______________________________________________
> orca-list mailing list
> orca-list gnome org
> https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list
> Orca wiki: https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/Orca
> Orca documentation: https://help.gnome.org/users/orca/stable/
> GNOME Universal Access guide:
> https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-help/stable/a11y.html