Mythspeech - mythtv for blind/visually impaired

[faginbagin]

Hi B.H.

The current implementation of mythspeech doesn't depend on Qt or Orca. It does depend on speech-dispatcher, it's library libspeechd, and a speech synthesizer, e.g. espeak or festival. The versions provided on precise 12.04 is 0.7.1 for speech-dispatcher/libspeechd and 1.46.02 for espeak. The versions provided on lucid 10.04 is 0.6.8 for speech-dispatcher/libspeechd and 1.43.03 for espeak. The lucid 10.04 version might be "good enough" to support mythspeech. I see that the latest version of Vinux, 3.0.2, is based on Ubuntu 10.04.4. I believe that also means Vinux uses the Ubuntu 10.04 repositories. So, if you install mythtv 0.23 on Vinux, I should be able to provide a mythspeech that will work on Vinux without you needing to compile anything from source.

If there's at least one person who would be willing to install and configure MythTV 0.23 and test mythspeech on either Vinux 3.0.2 or Ubuntu/Mythbuntu 10.04 or 10.10, I'd be happy to see if I can backport mythspeech.

Regards,
Helen

On 12/23/2012 03:15 AM, B. Henry wrote:
> The problem, with these older releases is that the later orca releases only run on unity, and I think really only 12.04 and to a point 11.10 work well enough to be viable. The reason then later orca versions are needed are so that some QT support is available.
> I know nothing about the details of what QT programs work and which don't. GTK+ is pretty much what Orca worked with until about a year ago.
> I'll post your original post as well as these replies to a couple other lists and perhaps get up more interest.
> I'm going to sleep right now, but I'll get off a few e-mails tomorrow.
> The Vinux list is an especially good place as there are over 300 blind and low vision subscribers, and while many are mixed OS-users, others like myself use Linux as their primary or only OS.
> Vinux is basically just Ubuntu with some special tweaks, some settings preconfigured to be more speech and magnifier friendly and some extra scripts and different software choices again to make things work as well out of the box for blind and low vision folk.
> Then there's a private list for some blind Linux students and another small googlegroup/mailing list for folks interested in open-source and accessibility.
> Hopefully between these lists and my twitter and facebook contacts I can find some other interested people.
> Thanks again, and I will be in touch.
>
>
> On 12/22/2012 05:18 PM, faginbagin wrote:
>> Hi B.H.  (an anyone else using an older distribution)
>>
>> If there's interest, I can see what it would take to get mythspeech working on 10.04. As it happens, my "production" MythTV environment consists of machines running 10.04 and 10.10 (for TV tuners that needed a newer kernel), with MythTV 0.23.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Helen
>>
>> P.S. Time to sign off until tomorrow.
>>
>> On 12/22/2012 05:13 PM, B. Henry wrote:
>>>
>>> does this software have a CLI, or is this only interacted with via the qt interface?
>>> I am a native English speaker, but speak more Spanish than English these days, for some years now, so perhaps I could be of some assistance.
>>> I don't currently have a version of Ubuntu that allows the use of the latest Orca and thus QT however. This will be changing soon, but for now I'm using a combination of 10.04 and 11.04 and xdesktop orca.
>>> Sounds very interesting, and I'll for sure be giving this a try when possible.
>>> --
>>> Regards,
>>> B.H.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 12/22/2012 03:45 PM, faginbagin wrote:
>>>> I'd like to announce Mythspeech, which makes it easier for the blind and/or visually impaired to use MythTV, an open source DVR (digital video recorder).
>>>>
>>>> Information about MythTV can be found here: http://www.mythtv.org/
>>>> It is supported by Ubuntu and there is a Ubuntu based distribution customized specifically for MythTV, Mythbuntu: http://www.mythbuntu.org/
>>>>
>>>> More details about Mythspeech can be found here: http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/MythSpeech
>>>>
>>>> Mythspeech is not a perfect solution, but I'm told by one user:
>>>> "Maria is VERY happy with her talking MythTV, and it has made her life so much easier!"
>>>>
>>>> How imperfect is the current implementation of mythspeech? One glaring example is that it cannot help with the initial setup and configuration of MythTV. I think you will need some vision or a friend or family member who can help with this step.
>>>>
>>>> I would very much like to talk to developers with experience in accessibility. The current implementation of Mythspeech builds on MythTV's support for LCD displays and uses speech-dispatcher's API, but I'm thinking a better long term approach might be to implement Qt's accessibility classes. MythTV is a Qt application, but it does not use Qt widgets.
>>>>
>>>> I would also like to know if there are interested users whose first language is not English. MythTV has been translated into many languages, and mythspeech should be able to speak in those languages, if they are supported by speech-dispatcher. But there are some things that could be improved if there is interest.
>>>>
>>>> Of course, I welcome any and all feedback, bug reports, etc.
>>>>
>>>> Regards,
>>>> Helen
>>>>
>>>
>>
>