Re: screen readers for BeOS?

[Jason White <jasonw ariel its unimelb edu au>]

On Wed, Dec 13, 2006 at 09:40:24AM +0100, Yannick PLASSIARD wrote:
 
> > there is a radio automation package called tune 
> > tracker 
> > that uses the BeOS operating system, from what I can gather from google it 
> > appears to be some sort of unix like os.
> > is there a screen reader that will work on the BeOS operating system?
> > can some one help point me in the write direction?
> 	Assuming what you said is true i.e. BeOS is an unix-like OS, you 
> may be able to run a BrlTty on it in combination with the "screen" 
> program (for the console mode).

This might be possible. However, BeOS has its own graphical desktop not based
on Gnome, KDE or anything else. There is no screen reader for the BeOS
graphical environment.

I can't remember where I read about this, but apparently BeOS was sold some
time ago to a vendor who hasn't been making it widely and publicly available.
If I remember rightly, there were programmers attempting to write a
free/open-source version - but no, it doesn't support the Gnome accessibility
API or any other accessibility solution as far as I know.

Another interesting operating system for which there is no screen reader is
Plan 9, developed by the same research group that originally created Unix. I
have read papers describing the system and its user interface, and it's very
well designed, but even though it is now available as Free Software (and Open
Source) it hasn't attracted as much development effort as it deserves. There
is a related system called Inferno that will run under other operating
systems, including Linux. Again, assistive technology support isn't available.