Desktops other than gnome

[Alex Midence]

Hello, MacKenzie,

I'm very you liked the suggestion of the hotkey for starting the
screen reader and that you are thinking about including it in the next
 Kubuntu release.

You ask if there are terminal screen readers.  Yes, in this case, the
screen reader is Yasr.  Orca does read a terminal, but it's the Gnome
terminal and not so well as yasr does.  The other command line screen
reader is Speakup but that is for pure Console mode only not a
terminal inside an x-windows system like KDE or Gnome.  I will look
into contacting the kde accessibility list to put  my questions to the
dev for the Screen Reader.

Thanks for all the info.

Alex M



 Date: Mon, 9 May 2011 09:53:56 -0400
> From: Mackenzie Morgan <macoafi at gmail.com>
> To: ubuntu-accessibility at lists.ubuntu.com
> Subject: Re: Desktops other than gnome
> Message-ID: <BANLkTim4oea5gn=sFb67b792f7nW3eLwOw at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 9:31 AM, Alex Midence <alex.midence at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi, Mackenzie,
>>
>> If you plan to include KAccessible in the 11.10 release of Kubuntu, do
>> you think there is a way to create a hotkey that would launch it? ?For
>> instance, in Vinux, we have either alt-control o or shift control o
>> which runs Orca no matter where you are in Gnome including the gdm
>> login screen. ?This way, if something ever breaks speech or, hangs it
>> up, you can always restart the screen reader without having to worry
>> about being in the right place to type in its name.
>
> Oh, thanks! I'll put that on the list of adjustments to Kubuntu
> defaults.  A default shortcut would be great!  The plan so far was to
> mimic the Ubuntu installer:  if the system is installed with the
> screenreader on, enable it by default.  However, I have no idea
> whether it can run during KDM.  I haven't tried it yet. When running
> on the desktop it has a tray icon (which...well...) and you can choose
> to make it speak.  Having a keyboard shortcut to start it would
> necessitate that QT_ACCESSIBILTY=1 be set by default on all sessions.
>
>> I was thinking
>> that such an option would let somebody start hearing their system talk
>> from the very outset. ?Also, I'm a bit startled by what appears to be
>> a statement that KAccessibility is a screen reader. ?I thought it was
>> an accessibility api.
>
> QAccessible is the API.  KAccessible is the screenreader that
> interacts with QAccessible.
>
> Does this mean that it is a full-fledged screen
>> reading solution that lets you read the screen in a controled manner
>> like speakup, orca and CO.? ?I was under the impression that this
>> wasn't the case in KDE which is why no blind people that I know of use
>> it right now.
>
> KAccessible was written in the last year.  KDE 4.6 is the first to
> have it, so Natty is our first release where it could possibly work.
>
>>?If it reads only a few things, I wonder what would need
>> to be done to it to flesh it out. ?To have a proper screne reader, you
>> need a few things:
>
> It can read any Qt or KDE widget that is based on a base-Qt widget.
> Custom KDE widgets that are "from scratch" are still in the lurch.
> This would include the terminal portion of Konsole and also KHTML.
> Terminals have their own screenreaders though, right?
>
> < snip list >
>
>> There's more. ?I feel rather guilty for not coming up with four more
>> things just to round this out to 10 but, I'm sure you get the picture.
>> ?Bakc to my original question, do you happen to know if KAccessibility
>> actualy offers this sort of thing? ?If not, do you know or can you
>> point me to docs that would tell me just how much or how little of it
>> can be done with KAccessibility?
>
> I've only played with it a little bit, so I'm not really sure about
> all that.  I'd suggest asking on the KDE-Accessibility mailing list.
> Seb Sauer is the main (only?) developer on KAccessible.
>
> --
> Mackenzie Morgan