Well, brltty is for braille support, not speech output, and I agree that it is generally distributed separately. However, speakup is physically part of the linux kernel (for those distros that include it) though there are other screen readers (such as yasr for text mode, and orca for gui output) I think a screen reader should still be considered. True, msdos didn't include one, and to buy one cost nearly a thousand dollars once software and hardware were combinations were purchased (there weren't any that worked with soundblasters originally) Freedos is of course free, and thereby providing a screen reader that does work out of the box would encourage many more folks to give it a try. It may be something that wasn't included with msdos, but by default, msdos didn't include mscdex either, until several iterations of 5.x was out, so I see nothing wrong with "bending" the guidelines for this one. For blind users, not including is exactly the same as not including a monitor, and expecting folks to be able to use their computers off the shelf. I will of course create my own distribution with screen reader support built-in if necessary, but I'd really like to avoid this if at all possible.
I'll install freedos again on one of my machines, and see if I can get it working with any of my screen readers (I have managed to accumulate quite a few over the years) but as you point out, modifying the source for provox should be easy enough. Failing that, I am the owner of the defunct syntha-voice slimware dos screen reader product, and can certainly port that to freedos if something more robust than provox is necessary, but since provox is minimal, and very small, for an initial release at least, it probably would be better to use that one, especially since source for slimware isn't allowed to be made available per my agreement with the previous owners <sigh> With that said though, I do respect your stand-point, and if no screen reader is the final word, then I'll certainly not belabor the point here, but I'd strongly urge that if at all possible, something, whether it be provox or something else, be included just so visually impaired/blind people can use freedos out of the box so to speak, starting the screen reader after dos is up and running should be a simple enough task for anyone who wants to try it out, (I.E. no need to have it start automatically at system boot by default). ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/ _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
