Re: help needed

[Tomas Cerha <cerha brailcom org>]

Mamert Sossah wrote:
> I am a visually impaired student, and I would like to start by using
> linux.  I am facing accessibility problems.

Hello, I'd recommend starting using Linux on console.  Linux console is very
well accesible these days and it will allow you to install gnopernicus and all
the Gnome software.

I am not sure what your current background about Linux is, however you might
want to know, that the console is a text-mode user interface which is very
popular among blind Linux users.  There are two options how you can use Linux
console - Speakup screen reader or Emacs with speech support.

Speakup's homepage is at http://www.linux-speakup.org/speakup.html.  Note that
it doesn't mention the possibility of using Speakup with software synthesizers
through Speechd-Up (http://www.freebsoft.org/speechd-up).

Emacs can be made accessible with EmacsSpeak (http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net)
or Speechd-el (http://www.freebsoft.org/speechd-el).

Each of the solutions has it's advantages so I recommend trying all of them.
If you are very new to Linux, you will probably need to choose a Linux
distribution.  I can say, that we have very good experience with Debian
(www.debian.org).  It includes most of the accessibility related software.  An
interesting overview of Linux Accessibility can be also found at
http://www.delysid.org/debian.html.

Best Regards, Tomas Cerha.

-- 
Brailcom, o.p.s. http://www.brailcom.org
Free(b)soft project http://www.freebsoft.org
Eurochance project http://eurochance.brailcom.org