OT: Is there a list for blind Mac users and programmers?

[Bailey, Bruce]

Brent, my apologies for taking so long to respond to your post.

> How well will the shell work,

OS X is based on BSD Unix.  You can have the Mac boot to the command line if you like, but the usual route is to use an application called "Terminal" which can be configure to launch the shell of your choice.

> and how is the speech?

Mac's have shipped with integrated text-to-speech since the very beginning, I think in 1987.  It is very good.  The only sample I could find quickly is at URL:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/89/Vicki_speech_synthesis_test_PlainTalk.ogg

> What synth?

Apple calls their technology Plain Talk.  Here are a couple of links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_PlainTalk
http://www.apple.com/speech/

> Is VoiceOver going to be a feeble product like Narrator in Windows?

No!  VoiceOver is being advertised as an integrated underlying optional feature of the OS and not a separate application.  Apple demonstrated VoiceOver two weeks ago at the CSUN conference.  The main apps they featured were web browsing and email.  As you probably know, Narrator is not even compatible with IE nor Outlook!
http://www.apple.com/accessibility/voiceover/

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