Ubuntu 9.04 installation instructions via Orca

[Willie Walker]

Hi All:

I grown exhausted from the beating up Ubuntu has taken over the past 
several weeks.  Admittedly, Ubuntu has had unfortunate events happen 
with audio integration that cause speech to become corrupted.  I think a 
lot of this has to do more with Pulse Audio integration issues than 
anything else.

Much of my frustration is that I have not had the luxury of time to 
spend looking at Ubuntu-specific problems.  I work primarily on 
OpenSolaris because that's where my funding comes from -- many thanks to 
Sun Microsystems for its courage and commitment to fund and pioneer open 
source accessibility.

I hold a place in my heart for Ubuntu, however, because their early work 
with integrating accessibility into their live CD helped bring GNOME 
accessibility to more and more people.  I believe part of Orca's success 
is due to Ubuntu's work in this space.

So, while watching some Orca regression tests run on my OpenSolaris 
machine today, I spent the time to download Ubuntu 9.04 and install it 
on a decrepit laptop.  I installed it twice - once with the screen 
reader option and once without the screen reader option.

When I installed with the screen reader option, things went fairly 
smoothly and I ended up with an installation that spoke as expected. 
When I installed without the screen reader option, speech exhibited the 
problem everyone has been complaining about.  I was able to remedy the 
situation easily by doing a "sudo apt-get remove pulseaudio" and then 
rebooting.

I've written some brief instructions for Ubuntu Jaunty up on the Orca 
WIKI.  All said and done, Ubuntu 9.04 is not the accessibility disaster 
that people are making it out to be:

http://live.gnome.org/Orca/UbuntuJaunty

Please note that the above is a WIKI.  The heart of a WIKI is the 
community, which includes all of you.  If you have constructive and 
helpful things to add, please add them to the WIKI so other people can 
benefit.  In addition, if you have feedback for Ubuntu, please let the 
Ubuntu folks know.

Will

PS - Reminder - I work for Sun Microsystems on OpenSolaris.  Just 
because I wrote up these brief Ubuntu Jaunty notes today does not 
automatically make me your for-free-at-your-beck-and-call Ubuntu support 
whipping boy. ;-)

http://opensolaris.org/os/project/indiana/status/accessibility/AccessibleLiveCd/