[u-a-dev] Plan for improving the boot up experience for persons with disabilities

[Nicolas Pitre]

On Thu, 19 Aug 2010, Paul Hunt wrote:

> Currently if a user wishes to enable any assistive technologies such as
> the Orca screen reader, they must hit a key at a specific point during
> the boot process to get to the legacy boot menu.
> 
> They then must select their preferred option and start the boot process
> with no audible feedback from their computer at all.
> 
> If the user has no useful vision this is extremely tricky as the exact
> time at which to hit a key depends entirely on your hardware - CD drive
> speed etc., and they have no way of knowing if they were successful
> until either the machine comes up with their desired technology active
> or they give up and power off

I totally agree.

> I would like to try and come up with a solution that would eliminate the
> need for any guesswork as to when to hit keys, and that would provide
> feedback to the user at all stages and enable them to select an
> assistive technology to use, in a way that is none intrusive to people
> who don't need such things.

Best would be for the grub prompt to beep.  Or is it isolinux that is 
used on the CD?  In any case, there should be an escape sequence that 
can be inserted in the greeting screen to generate a beep.

And not to confuse a single beep with the one being emitted by some 
BIOSes early during boot, there should be two short beeps, with half a 
second delay between them.  This would be the signal to indicate that 
the boot loader is ready to accept key input.  That shouldn't be too 
intrusive to those who don't need them.

Then, ideally, scrolling up and down in the accessibility option menu 
should produce some audible feedback, like one beep for the first 
option, two beeps for the second option, etc.

I think that's all that would be needed for a blind person to activate 
the appropriate option with confidence.


Nicolas