I just had to look up, what Bixby was.
I always hated virtual “assistants” with all my heart, starting from Clippy.
There’s no way, Alexa or Siri or what they are all called enter my home. On my phone, all this crap (especially Google’s) is deactivated. Only the (probably installed but well hidden) Chinese spyware remains (I’ve got a phone from Huawei).
Samsung mostly, manufacture, half decent hardware (I have 10+ year old Samsung LCD monitors that still work) - what they’re really MERDE (excuse my French) at is smart things and software and marketing… Mein GOTT Samsung KNOX! And they boast on the splash screen (which sometimes you will see on constant loop when your samsung device goes into a contant boot loop) “Powered by KNOX”…
I actually call it “cripped by KNOX”… I bought my phone legitimately - but you won’t let me upgrade to Android 11 or 12?
Oi Samsung! Stick to hardware!
(proviso - they’re also pretty shit at making refrigerators!)
Samsung is most definitely one of these companies, trying to juggle with too many balls at the same time.
A long time ago, in a distant universe, there was a distro specifically intended for Blind / Low Vision users called Blinux - I never tried it but it was claimed to come speech enabled from the installer on. According to a blind friend who mostly used a very expensive proprietary “DECtalk” board w/ Windows as his primary machine, it worked fairly well, except that you couldn’t see / troubleshoot the boot process as the screen reader didn’t start until you got to the login prompt… Once logged in, he said it was a mixed bag as some applications worked and others didn’t, presumably depending on whether they used the system I/O processes or ‘rolled their own’.
A couple of years ago, my SO lost her most of her vision (she is now legally blind), and I tried to see what the current state of things was… Blinux has apparently been gone for years, but supposedly most of it’s accessibility stuff has been incorporated into the usual standard distros / window managers.
About the only V.I. specific stuff I could find is the Adrienne project mentioned in an earlier post (but I posted a question there, and got no response…) and “Emacspeak” (sp?) that is supposed to be an add-in for making emacs talk…
For various reasons, I have not tried to build her a Linux box w/ either… Currently she uses a Macbook, w/ a lot of zooming on a large external monitor, which she makes work with much frustration and cursing (it is painful to listen to her using it…) She also has a Windows laptop w/ Fusion on it that was given to her by the state rehab folks, but she says it does not work well at all for her… She says that it’s because Windows / Fusion is broken, though I suspect it is largely lack of proper training and configuration (she has not gotten any significant amount of training support)
ex-Gooserider
Hi Arthur,
That is really sad, and what you say about her experiences with available software concerns me greatly.
I know very little about Adrienne, but I suggest you approach
Klaus Knopper directly. You must at least be able to get a download.
I am also aware of this free software
sadly, it does not have a Linux version … perhaps someone could help with that… but it is both new and free.
Regards
Neville
It was Klaus that I wrote to and didn’t get a response… From what the site seemed to say at the time was that you needed to give him a good bit of money to get an answer…
Thanks for the pointer, I’ve forwarded it to her, hope she finds it useful.
ex-Gooserider
Hi Arthur,
This says it is available for download and that it is part of all new Knoppix releases.
https://www.knopper.net/knoppix-adriane/index-en.html
Just find a Knoppix mirror… a lot of them are in German…here is one English site
Regards
Neville
There is a distribution, which is currently maintained and aimed to be able to be used eyes free:
How well it works, I can’t say. According to them, it works, according to a blind former Linux user, I talked to online, but who hasn’t tried it, it’s “just a hobby project”.
Looking at the project’s team, I see, they are ten people, but with more than maintaining the distribution on their plate: They are also working on two Braille solutions for Linux and have completed an OCR suite for the blind.
For sure, they don’t have the resources like Microsoft, Apple or Google, but they seem to be quite serious about what they are doing. For me, this is definitely more than a hobby project.
A VERY nice face! 
