[nfbcs] Is there a PRO / CON list for screen readers

Fri Dec 28 16:49:51 UTC 2012

Hellow Everyone,

For those who don't know me my name is Jim Barbour and I've spend the last 30 years doing Linux systems, development, and architecture work for a living.

I am not aware of a good list of screen readers with their strengths and weaknesses.

As for Linux, for blind people there are two ways to access a Linux machine

As has been said, one tried and true way to access Linux machines is
by using an ssh client, such as putty, from a windows machine with a
screen reader.

For those who need to use Linux as a workstation, there is an option
called Orca.  As Lloyd says, there is not enough accessibility
information in standard X windows to build a screen reader for
standard X windows applications. 

However, over the past 20 years a few frameworks have been built on
top of X-windows mostly to provide Linux desktop users a better user
experience.  Two of the most well known of these frameworks are gnome
and KDE.

Along with these frameworks came a screen reader called Orca, which is
still available.  Orca will work with most X programs written on top
of the gnome, and to a lesser extent the KDE, frameworks.  Not all X
applications are written on top of these frameworks.  Also, Orca is not
as polished as many of the windows screen readers - even the open
source ones such as NVDA.

If someone wants direct access to a Linux windowing system, they can
install recent distributions of Ubuntu Linux and can use Orca out of
the box.  There is also a distro of Linux called Blinux that has
several console screen readers (yasr, speakup, emacspeak, etc.) along
with Orca built into it.  Other distributions of Linux include Gnome
and Orca as well.  I don't have a complete list.

If you're needing to use your enterprise's favorite Linux
distribution, check and see if it has Gnome installed.  If it's meant
to be used as a workstation, as apposed to just being a server, it
will likely have gnome installed.  You can then install Orca and be
set to go.

I don't want to make this sound like getting going with Orca will be
easy.  It will take a lot of time and patience to learn the quirks and
bugs of this screen reader, but it does exist, is being worked on, and
is being used.

Here is a link to the Gnome accessibility page

http://projects.gnome.org/accessibility/

I hope this helps,

Jim

On Fri, Dec 28, 2012 at 09:14:09AM -0500, Rasmussen, Lloyd wrote:
> A Windows screen reader like JAWS, Window-Eyes or NVDA must work with accessibility information provided to it by the running applications (by means of MSAA, WPF, UIA, etc.) or hook into the function calls which place characters and graphics on the screen and build a database (an off-screen model or OSM) and keep track of that.  It cannot read bitmaps from an X11 screen unless it can do OCR in a reasonable amount of time and make sense of the results.
> 
> You can run Cygwin on a Windows system to sort-of emulate a Posix operating system, and JAWS and Window-Eyes, at least, can work with the character-mode aspects of Cygwin.
> 
> You can use Telnet or SSH to communicate with another machine from a PC or a Mac running VoiceOver for character-mode communication.  John Heim may talk about that in a subsequent message.
> 
> We have Speakup, YASR and a couple of other programs for character-mode access in Linux.  There is Orca for the Gnome desktop.  There is a whole accessibility framework on some of these systems, but I'm not sure that it has made inroads into traditional X11 systems.  People have worked on some access to X11 since the 1990s, even where you work, but I don't think this resulted in ready-to-run packages.  The Mercator Project was an early part of this.
> 
> Then there is EmacsSpeak, by TV Raman and others, an audio desktop which works on many Linux systems, and can be made to work in OS/X.  I'm going to forward the latest "press release" from Dr. Raman, because it is entertaining and also contains useful links to the project, which many blind people use as a productivity tool.
> 
> Hope this helps.  I don't use all of this stuff, but I monitor a lot of mailing lists to maintain awareness of what people are using and some of their trials and tribulations.  
> 
> Lloyd Rasmussen, Senior Project Engineer
> National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped
> Library of Congress   202-707-0535
> http://www.loc.gov/nls
> The preceding opinions are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Library of Congress, NLS.
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: nfbcs [mailto:nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Graham Mehl
> Sent: Friday, December 28, 2012 4:41 AM
> To: nfbcs at nfbnet.org
> Subject: [nfbcs] Is there a PRO / CON list for screen readers
> 
> Hi All,
> 
> I was trying to resolve a screen reader issue I am having at work and got into a discussion with a colleague about screen readers.  I quickly realized I did not know all the various screen readers out there now. Does anyone know of a place I can get a list of screen readers that are available now?
> And even better yet a Pros and Cons list for each. One of the issues I am trying to resolve is how to communicate between two OS platforms (Windows to Linux [Redhat or CentOS]).  And the second major issue is communicating between two [remote] desktops. The only screen reader I am currently aware of that handles  these issues to any degree is JAWS from Freedom Scientific.
> 
> 
>  
> 
> I know there are a couple different applications that may assist with the communications aspect. I am trying to determine if the limitations are on the applications or the screen readers themselves. Either due to a lack of knowledge or ability to communicate I could not explain to my colleague why
> X11 forwarding would not work with screen readers.  I believe the applications that can handle the X11 forwarding, like VNC viewer, are not accessible.
> 
>  
> 
> Thank you in advance for any information and insights.
> 
>  
> 
> --
> 
> Graham
> 
> blind at trailstone.com
> 
> 
> 
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