An Accessibility spin of Silverblue, with the best experience possible?
discussion.fedoraproject.org
I read this discussion thread but it was closed pretty soon. I read @vpolasek 's post on daily use of Desktop Linux as a blind person and found it really interesting. There was the idea of a spin, which I think fits it. Why should blind people use a sighted Desktop with a screenreader? This makes no sense to me. I am really curious and think this is essential, it should be a very high top priority. Blind people will probably have very different needs, and I am would love to discuss what the b...

Accessibility is a really important field. Everyone should have the right to use a free and friendly Operating System.

But its a pretty nieche topic, and I also think current ways of implementing it are not perfect.

I created a Thread on Fedora Discussion (Link) but Lemmy is way more active so I would love to spread attention to this topic, and collect your ideas.

  • How should a blind Desktop be structured?
  • Are there any big dealbreakers like Wayland, TTS engines, specific applications e.g.?
  • What do you think would be the best base Desktop to build such a setup on?
  • Would you think an immutable, out of the box Distro like “Fedora Silversound”, with everything included, the best tools, presets, easy setup e.g. is a good idea?
  • How privacy-friendly can a usable blind Desktop be?

Also, how would you like to call it? “A Talking Desktop”?

I am excited for your comments!

  • Petter1
    3·
    8 months ago

    I guess it would be a nice gnome extension which reads out what is highlighted when u search for apps using super. And read the notifications if you hit super+V.

    Installing apps would most likely work best through a terminal which talks.

    I don’t know how blind people use the web, maybe there are already browser for that. Maybe Lynx, Links2, eLinks or W3M are good solutions for that.

    I guess CLI apps in general work best for blind people since gui seems not very important for blind people. But some apps only work with gui, so the window manager should somehow translate gui into language 🤔

    And now I found that gnome has a standard accessibility feature called brltty which allows connecting Braille devices to Linux to read with your fingers, this allows to use nano and/or vim (and much more)

    And after a bit digging more I found Vojtux which is a fedora remix with accessibility features enabled out of box and a extra repo with apps for even better accessibility