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! 
Although several years have passed since this topic was posted, I’m genuinely glad to see discussions like this being raised again.
As a blind user myself, I can say that Linux is excellent in many areas. Unfortunately, accessibility is not one of its strong points.
The only mainstream screen reader available on Linux today is Orca, and while it does a respectable job, it is nowhere near as powerful or mature as NVDA on Windows. However, the problem is not Orca alone. A major part of the issue lies in the lack of high-quality text-to-speech engines and proper speech infrastructure on Linux.
One of the biggest challenges I personally face is related to language support. English is not my primary language; my native language is Arabic. On Linux, there is no reliable mechanism for automatic language and voice switching within Orca. The screen reader does not detect the language of the text and route it to the appropriate voice automatically.
On Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android, this is handled very well by solutions such as Acapela TTS and Vocalizer, where the screen reader can seamlessly switch voices based on the detected language. On Linux, this lack of multilingual awareness makes everyday work extremely difficult for users who do not rely solely on English.
This creates a significant barrier for non-English speakers and limits Linux’s usability in real, multilingual environments.
I haven’t even touched on the general usability of Linux applications with screen readers, as that is a whole separate discussion on its own.
It would be interesting to read of your experiances with this site (our site) ?
Is it easy to use, can you screen read questions and answers, how does it cope with things like links, command lines, emoticons, when we like or thumbs up a question or answer.
Could we do better to help others in similar situations ?
I know and realise that physical disabilities change for each person but some guidance may trigger us to cover in another way . I am keen for inclusion rather than exclusion of members no matter their accessibility resrictions
Thank you very much for your thoughtful reply and for your genuine interest in inclusion and accessibility for all users. That attitude is truly appreciated.
Regarding my experience with this site specifically: overall, Discourse provides fairly good accessibility support. I can read topics and replies, browse categories, post responses, like posts, copy and open links, and copy code blocks without major difficulties when using a screen reader.
There are, however, some minor accessibility issues. These are not specific to your site alone, but are general limitations of Discourse itself and can be observed on other Discourse-based forums as well, such as:
For example, the dropdown suggestion menus that appear when using @ to mention a user or # to reference a category or tag are not accessible with screen readers. The screen reader cannot properly navigate or interact with these suggestion lists.
Additionally, the toolbar buttons in the post editor are not announced with meaningful labels. The screen reader usually identifies them only as “button,” without any indication of their function, which makes them difficult to use efficiently.
There are a few other small accessibility quirks here and there, but grading the overall experience, the main limitations appear to be issues that should ideally be addressed by the Discourse developers themselves rather than by individual site administrators.
Overall, though, your site is quite usable from an accessibility standpoint, and I appreciate your openness to feedback and your commitment to making the platform welcoming to everyone.
Is there some way we can get your comments re Linux and Orca to the developers?
It should be possible to have these issues addressed.
Thank you for asking, I really appreciate that.
Yes, there are ways to forward this feedback to the right people, but accessibility on Linux is unfortunately fragmented across multiple components. To summarize the main points clearly:
Orca is part of the GNOME project, so feature requests such as automatic language and voice switching should primarily be reported to the GNOME / Orca issue tracker on GitLab.
However, this issue is not caused by Orca alone. It depends heavily on the underlying speech stack used on Linux.
There is very limited interest and investment in developing high-quality text-to-speech engines for Linux compared to other platforms.
At present, there are almost no good-quality voices available on Linux.
This limitation is particularly frustrating because:
Similarly, Acapela TTS provides high-quality speech engines:
As a result, blind users on Linux lack access to mature, multilingual speech technologies that are standard on other platforms.
Overall, the problem is spread across several layers:
This fragmentation makes it difficult for users to know where to report issues and makes coordinated improvements harder.
Thank you for bringing this back up and making comments.
Unfortunately I no longer have a need for this sort of distro as my GF passed away very suddenly in September…
It’s left me with a lot of other stuff to deal with, but looking for a blind-friendly distro is not on that list any more 
ex-Gooserider
@MesterPerfect ,
There have been discussions before on this forum
You may find some useful leads in that link.
Regards
Neville
Our thoughts go out to you at such sad times
