Screen reader advice for a Linux sysadmin

Tue Feb 27 19:35:50 UTC 2018

I was in your position several years ago. My solution was
to set up my environment to use all text based command line tools, and
hook up a talking terminal based on DOS, Vocal Eyes, and Telix to a headless
Unix/Linux box.

Recently my DOS  machine died  for good, and I switched to speakup.
There is a        learning curve to get used to the speakup   function keys, but
aside from  that, my environment remains the same, except for minor 
quibbles about the voice of the default speech synthesizer, which
I will eventually resolve.

This                 works for me, but if there is a graphic   tool 
which you absolutely must use, you might check out Vinux, which
comes with a choice of three GUI options, none of which I know anything about.

Good luck.
Rudy

On Tue, Feb 27, 2018 at 10:55:13AM -0800, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:
> Hi everyone --
> 
> I just joined this list and I am a Linux sysadmin who has been in IT for
> over 20 years and my sight now is pretty close to nothing.  I am down to
> about 5 degrees of vision and going to nothing at some point, so am
> starting to look at screen readers to get used to them before everything
> goes dark.  I'm looking to see what other Linux users use and what works
> best.  I have a somewhat complicated desktop because I work in an
> engineering environment that has a lot of engineering tools based on java
> and X-Windows.  Some of the other tools are web based, which makes it
> easier.  I support a lot of varying tools and servers, both Linux and
> Windows.  I switched back from Linux to Windows as my base desktop for the
> accessibility functions.  I have cygwin installed so I can ssh to my
> servers.  I also use VNC Viewer so I can get to a VNC session on my servers
> in a gui and I also use RDP to get to my Windows servers.  I have decided
> that I loathe JAWS in the short time that I have tried it but admittedly I
> have not used it for very long.  I so far like NVDA much better and find it
> much more simple to learn.  I also use a Mac at home so have toyed with
> Voiceover.  I'm beginning to think that one screen reader is not going to
> do it all for me.  And that I just need to get used to one of them to
> start.  NVDA can read and understand a cygwin window, which is great.  It
> has zero idea what is inside a VNC viewer session.  I haven't yet tried it
> on an RDP session with Windows.  I know ORCA is available as well on
> Linux.  What do you all use?  Any advice?  I'm wondering if I would be
> better off with a Mac as my base operating system since I've heard
> Voiceover handles Java apps better.
> 
> Thanks for the advice!
> 
> Kathy
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-- 
Rudy Vener
Website: http://www.rudyvener.com