Have you thought recently about our less able friends and neighbours?
I am thinking about disabled generally, we are all capable of identifying wheelchair users, but what about partial sight or blind. Does this site help them find information, are they encouraged to visit or is the site complex.
Screen readers are getting better, but where do you click, how do you find anything.
To continue into linux generally is there a version aimed at this group of fellow users ?
When you start up windows there is a guide spoken which asks questions in the chosen language, does linux do the same, is it user friendly on screen readers, size changes for for text
There are so many questions and this is just around sight, perhaps deaf have different issues, not getting into other areas
I am no expert and dont have answers just questions. Would like to be inclusive not exclusive. Also I do not want to offend any member who may have difficulties.
Before I worked on line for protonic who were a windows help site and we had a technician who was partially sighted but eventually abandonded us as could not work the site. Our fault as we did not understand the difficulty.
Thank you Paul
this discussion needed to get started
From what was discussed recently here
and in the replies that followed,
it would seem there is/was a Linux version called Vinux which is an Ubuntu derivative developed specifically for vision impaired Linux users.
It is apparently very useable. See the above link. @FBClark tells a beautiful story, you should read it !!
However its development ceased in 2017.
It is still available for download, but it is an obsolete version of Ubuntu
We need to do what we can to encourage someone with development skills to take on
getting Vinux up to date.
There is also Adriane… the software for visually impaired users which comes free with Knoppix. I believe Knoppix, including Adriane, is still actively maintained?
It is Debian based.
The major distros seem to do very little. I seem to remember some (eg MX) have an
Accessibility Menu Item… but that is all. How is a person with limited vision supposed to find a menu item?
No doubt there are more bits of helpful Linux around.
Can we all have a look and mention it here. ?
We need to know what is available, and does anyone , have experience in this area?
and @Abhishek can this site do anything to assist disabled people to access it?
@callpaul.eu it’s indescribable how a totally blind person uses a PC. It would be best for you to actually watch. From input they get from screenreaders they are able to use keyboard shortcuts, series of keystrokes to navigate through a web page or a document which the screenreader relays to them. I’ve never seen a deaf-blind user, but their ability to do the same but with a Braille device tells them the same things that the blind hear and we see. The thing that will blow your mind is that nearly all blind users of screenreaders set the word rate very fast, so fast that those who aren’t accustomed to it only hear a blur.
As for website accessibility, there are organizations that work for improving accessibility for blind, deaf-blind, mobility impaired and even some cognitive impairments. Here is one; https://webaim.org/
Here are a few keyboard shortcuts that I still use in my web browser;
F5 refreshes web pages and some other programs.
F6 highlights the contents of the browser’s navigation bar. When a person using a screenreader uses F6 the screenreader is focused on the URL and reads it to the user.
Ctrl+(any number key) moves the focus from tab to tab. Example; Ctrl+2 will move focus to the second tab of a browser.
Ctrl+page up moves focus left one tab while Ctrl+page down moves focus one tab to the right.
The Tab will move from item to item on a web page while Shift+Tab will move backwards.
When I’m renaming files in my file browser I simply select a file, press F2 and the file name is highlighted and selected for renaming, no need to right click and select Rename. Keyboard shortcuts are an incredibly fast way of doing things.
A lot of people are familiar with the Ctrl+c to copy and Ctrl+v to paste. Those are just the tip of the iceberg.
There is an entire ‘language’ of keyboard shortcuts allowing one to anything that can be done with a mouse. This language originated before the mouse was invented and immediately when ‘windows’ graphics were first coded.
Nearly two decades ago I hard coded an early website for a blind association and to test it, I used the screenreader Orca and the text based web browser Lynx to fully test the accessibility of the site and every corner of each web page. With Orca I heard everything in the order that the Lynx browser rendered them and showed them to me so I could hear what a blind person would hear and see it textually at the same time. These programs are Linux packages so of course I used Linux to do the coding and testing. At that time I was maybe half fluent in the keyboard shortcuts so I could move through the site and each page nearly as well as a blind person would, and in the time since then I’ve lost quite a bit due to lack of practice.
I do NOT want to offend any members of this site by asking if you are disabled in any way, but perhaps one way we can learn is if you were to contact the site owner Abhishek, direct on private message to make suggestions as to how it can be improved
Abhishek, I am sure, would welcome your comments and try to take them into account to help us to help you.
My idea is to help make us and linux accessible to all, inclusive not exclusive. Small steps.
That is the key issue when it comes to finding a developer for Vinux.
It really needs someone who works with disabled people AND has Linux developer skills. That is a rare mix, and it explains why some of the development of Vinux has been done by blind people themselves.
We have to try. There must be someone with that mix of skills and experience.
Fractional scaling - which all major desktop environments are working to perfect - is something which would be highly appreciated in case of visual impairment.