The answer to both of your questions is yes.
Jaws for dos is free for dos use, and can be installed, though I don't
know where to obtain it, no idea if fs still has it on their site or
not, but a search of google should turn it up somewhere.
There is an opensource screen reader, but it requires a hardware
synthesizer, (as does jaws for dos I believe). It's called provox, and
it's available in multiple places, you can search for the filename
provox7.zip and it should turn up with very little searching.
That one does come with source, and I've asked in the past to see if it
could be included in freedos, but the answer was given that since it's
written in A86 assembler, the distributors of freedos would much prefer
for it to be converted to something that is freely available for dos
distribution, rather than a shareware package assembler. This would
entail converting the A86 assembly code to masm or tasm, since I believe
both of those assemblers are available for dos distribution, though I
could be wrong there. Tasm definitely is, though come to think of it,
I've not seen archive copies of masm anywhere for dos distribution, so
that might mean tasm should be the target assembler for provox conversion.
It was decided that although A86 allows licensed users (of which I am
one) to distribute software with A86 assembly code, since I don't
represent freedos in any way, that restriction wouldn't cover the
freedos project, which is why it was decided that converting to another
version of assembly would be necessary.
I'm not a good enough assembly programmer to do the conversion, though
these days it may be possible to get AI to do the conversion, then test
it thoroughly to verify full functionality.
On the other hand, if you run freedos in an emulator, it's possible your
windows/linux screen reader would take up the slack for you, allowing
you to use the freedos install without having a dos screen reader at
all, since it could use your windows one for the task. I've not tested
this though, so can't say how well it will work. I know it used to work
using dosemu under linux, but that was many many years ago, and I don't
know the current state of affairs regarding that kind of a setup these
days. I do use linux, but as much as I'd like to, I lost my dos machine
in the last move we made about 3 years ago, so I no longer have access
to bare metal dos, which is honestly the best way I liked to run dos.
One of these days, I'll get into emulators and mess with it to figure
out what works best now, and possibly release an image that does the
trick, though admittedly, there are one or two images that already have
dos images that come up talking, though I don't currently know where
those are stored, since it's been quite some time since I messed with
dos as mentioned above.
In any case, hope this helps. Feel free to post here with more
questions, I'm sure someone can answer them, even if that someone isn't me.
On 4/5/2025 8:19 PM, Armin Moradi via Freedos-user wrote:
Hello,
my name is armin moradi, I am 28 years old and i am blind.
I want to try free dos and i want to ask, is it posible to install for
example the jaws for dos screen reader?
Or, is a screenreader avaylable for free dos?
Regards
Armin Moradi
--
JAWS Certified, 2025
_______________________________________________
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
_______________________________________________
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
